Markdown cheat sheet for beginners

April 20, 2026 · 4 min read

Markdown is a tiny set of typing conventions that become formatted text. It powers READMEs on GitHub, notes in Obsidian, posts on Reddit, messages in Discord, and countless docs sites. You can learn 90% of it in five minutes — this is that five minutes.

Headings

Use # for headings. One # = biggest, six = smallest.

# H1
## H2
### H3

Bold and italic

*italic*  or  _italic_
**bold**  or  __bold__
***bold italic***

Lists

Bullets use - (or *). Numbered lists use 1. — and you can write all of them as 1.; the renderer numbers them in order.

- Apples
- Pears
- Plums

1. Wash
1. Chop
1. Cook

Links and images

[Visible text](https://example.com)
![Alt text for accessibility](image.jpg)

Code

Backticks for inline code, triple backticks (often with a language) for a block:

Use the `git status` command first.

```js
function hello(name) {
  return `Hi, ${name}`;
}
```

Quotes and rules

> A blockquote.

---  (three dashes = horizontal rule)

Tables

Pipes and dashes. The colons in the separator row control alignment.

| Tool      | Use         |
| --------- | ----------- |
| Markdown  | Writing     |
| JSON      | APIs        |

Things people forget

• Blank lines matter. Two newlines = a new paragraph. One newline is usually ignored unless you end the line with two spaces.
• Indent code blocks four spaces if you don't want to use triple backticks.
• Escape special characters with a backslash: \*not italic\*.
• Task lists (GitHub-flavoured): - [ ] todo and - [x] done.

Try it now

The fastest way to learn is to type. Open our Markdown Preview tool and play. It shows the rendered output side-by-side as you type and lets you copy or download the HTML when you're done.

Where Markdown shines (and where it doesn't)

It's perfect for technical writing, READMEs, blog posts, and notes. It's not great for layouts that need precise positioning, complex tables, or rich design — for those, reach for HTML, a proper word processor, or a design tool.

That's it. You now know enough Markdown to write a clean README. Go and write one.