# Markdown
Lover*
Hashtag-sharp, asterisk-tender. A love letter to the plain-text format that asked for nothing and gave us headings, lists and the quiet dignity of a well-placed backtick.
> write to it_
Hashtag-sharp, asterisk-tender. A love letter to the plain-text format that asked for nothing and gave us headings, lists and the quiet dignity of a well-placed backtick.
> write to it_We met in a README. You were wearing nothing but a pound sign and I knew, instantly, that you were a heading.
Others came before you. Word documents that changed font when I looked away. Rich text editors that hid three invisible spans inside every comma. You never hid anything. What I typed was what you were.
You made me bold with two asterisks. You made me tender with one. When I had something to quote, you leaned in with a little arrow and said: go on.
You open on every machine. You will still open in thirty years. That is more than I can say for most file formats, and for some people.
Yours in plain text,
a lover with a keyboard
Type Markdown on the left, see it come to life on the right. Everything happens in your browser: nothing is sent, nothing is saved, and any HTML you paste is shown as text, never run.
Everything this little editor understands. It is a handmade parser, so it speaks the essentials, fluently.
# Title
## SubtitleOne to six pound signs. The more you use, the quieter it speaks.
**bold** *italic*Two asterisks for confidence, one for a whisper. Underscores work too.
- item
1. firstDashes, asterisks or plus signs for lists. Numbers with a full stop for order.
[words](https://...)Links, square brackets then parentheses. Only web and mail links are allowed.
`code` and ```One backtick for a word, three on their own line for a whole block.
> a quote
---An arrow to quote somebody, three dashes for a pause in the conversation.
A Markdown file is already readable as plain text. The formatting is a bonus, not a condition.
No licence, no proprietary format. Any text editor opens it today, and will tomorrow.
No toolbar, no mouse. Formatting is just typing, which is what you were already doing.
It diffs cleanly in version control, and AI assistants read and write it naturally.