Markdown Cheat Sheet for Technical Writers

What is Markdown?

Markdown is a versatile markup language commonly used by technical writers to format text. This comprehensive cheat sheet covers various Markdown elements to assist you in creating well-structured and professional documentation for use cases such as API documentation, Readme files, web content, version control systems (Git), and collaboration platforms (Slack, GitHub). Many text editors and integrated development environments support Markdown, including VSCode and GitHub.

Format with Markdown

Format	Markdown	HTML
H1	# Heading 1	<h1>Heading 1</h1>
H2	## Heading 2	<h1>Heading 1</h1>
Bold Text	**bold text**	<b>bold text</b>
Italic text	*italic text*	<i>italic text</i>
bullet list item	- Item 1	<ul><li>Item 1</li></ul>
Numbered list item	1. Item 1	<ol><li>Item 1</li></ol>
Link	[My Website] (https://www.chanteltrivett.com)	<a href="https://www.chanteltrivett.com">Google</a>
Image		<img src="https://image.url" alt="image">
Code snippet	```code```	<pre>code</pre>

Tables

To create a table in Markdown, you use the pipe (`|`) character to separate columns and hyphens (`-`) to create the header row. Here's a basic example of a Markdown table with four rows and three columns:

```markdown

| Header 1 | Header 2 | Header 3 |

|--------------|--------------|--------------|

| Row 1, Col 1 | Row 1, Col 2 | Row 1, Col 3 |

| Row 2, Col 1 | Row 2, Col 2 | Row 2, Col 3 |

| Row 3, Col 1 | Row 3, Col 2 | Row 3, Col 3 |

| Row 4, Col 1 | Row 4, Col 2 | Row 4, Col 3 |

```

Here's how it breaks down:

• Each row is on a new line.

• Columns within a row are separated by the pipe (`|`) character.

• -The first row is used for headers and is separated from the rest of the table by hyphens (`-`).

• The alignment of the content within the columns is typically determined by colons (`:`). A colon on the left indicates left alignment, a colon on the right indicates right alignment, and colons on both sides indicate center alignment.

• This will render as a table in a Markdown viewer that supports tables. You can customize the content within each cell with your data.