An exegesis of the most ubiquitous piece of code on the web.
IN THE BEGINNING was the Word, and the Word was in plaintext, and the Word was in plaintext because plaintext was the Way. It was good.
On the sixth day-I'm skipping ahead here the internet was born. The Word needed to be rewritten in HTML. Now there were two Words. It was not good.
On the eighth day, after a bit of rest, Markdown was born. Markdown made it possible to bring forth the Word as HTML on the web, PDF in the library, LaTeX in the publishing house, even Microsoft Word DOC in the office-all generated from the same plaintext.
The people saw that in this form the Word was more flexible. It was good.
The internet rejoiced and put Markdown in all the things.
This is where the real problems began.
TODAY, MARKDOWN IS possibly the most ubiquitous piece of code on the web. Support for Markdown is embedded in nearly every online text box you're likely to encounter, and there's an entire economy of mobile writing and note-taking apps built on its back.
Markdown is not just a piece of software. It's also a markup language it's used to format plaintext, which then appears the way you want it to on, say, the internet. Markdown the markup language was designed to be "as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible," according to creator John Gruber's syntax guide. "A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions."
This story is from the September - October 2024 edition of WIRED.
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This story is from the September - October 2024 edition of WIRED.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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