Fixing Up My Markdown

If you write online, the chances are, you have heard of Markdown, the syntax created by John Gruber as a simplified way of marking up plain text with simple formatting that can then be processed to other formats, such as HTML. The premise is based around maintaining simplicity and portability of content. Once the domain of bloggers “in-the-know”, Markdown has become much more commonplace and is supported to some extent by many online systems that accept content. Not just content management systems, but also generic forms, case management tools, e-mail clients, and even many desktop applications too. It is almost a lingua franca for simple text formatting. I have been writing in Markdown for about 20 years now and I have definitely developed my own quirks and nuances in how I use it. Usually these are compatible with tools, but occasionally I get caught out in some tools by things like a lack of spacing. As such I had never subscribed to beautification or formatting tools because of…