Markdown is a plain-text formatting syntax — # for headings, * for bold, [text](url) for links — that renders to clean HTML.
Also called: .md · markdown syntax
John Gruber released Markdown in 2004 as a way to write for the web without touching HTML. GitHub, Reddit, Discord, Slack, Notion, and most static site generators speak a dialect of it.
CommonMark is the closest thing to a formal standard. GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) extends it with tables, task lists, strikethrough, and autolinked URLs.
Markdown is ideal for docs, blog posts, and READMEs — anything long-form that should stay diff-friendly in Git.
A readability score estimates how hard a piece of text is to read, usually as a US school grade level or a 0–100 ease score.
Lorem ipsum is a scrambled Latin passage used as placeholder text in mock-ups since the 1500s — it lets designers show layout without distracting readers with real content.