Sometimes when you’re typing you need to do just that. Type, let the words flow without having to stop and lift your hands to grab the mouse, I don’t know, to maybe click here or there to italicise this word or embolden the other.

OK - most people know about CTRL+I and CTRL+B; you do, don’t you?

But beyond that, wouldn’t it be great if you could insert a heading with the same ease? Or how about a link without that whole click, drag, highlight, whoops, start again?

Well that’s where Markdown comes in. I’ll admit that I’d been sort of aware of the existence of files ending with .md, but beyond that I’d never paid them any attention. Life’s too short! But here we go on Hugo, and Hugo like to use Markdown. You can use other ways in Hugo, but that’s beyond the scope of this little post.

This is not a tutorial on Markdown, you can find more information here.

Simply # in front of a word makes a heading:

Heading 1

Enclosing a word in * makes it italic
Or ** makes it bold

More details on the link above.

STOP!!!

It’s not just geeky things like github that use it. The Wordpress text editor also lets you use Markdown.

Conclusion

Markdown is A GOOD THING. Once you’ve got the hang of the basics, you find yourself really speeding along and getting on with it.