Markdown Quick Reference

Introduction

This is a personal note I originally created when I began learning Markdown. It has since evolved into a concise, practical quick-reference — especially useful for developers, technical writers, bloggers, and researchers.

Written entirely in Markdown, it’s part of a series of Quickrefs aimed at making everyday developer/tech-writer workflows easier. You might also find the following helpful:

1. [Git and GitHub Quickref](coming soon)
2. [Mac/Linux(ubuntu) Terminal Quickref](coming soon)

Feel free to explore — I hope they save you time and make your work smoother! ⭐️ If you find this useful, consider giving it a star — it helps others discover the project!

Why Markdown

Markdown is more than just a writing syntax — it's a foundational tool in today's content development workflows:

• Lightweight & readable: It’s plain text — easy to write, easy to read, and free from visual clutter or formatting bloat.
• Portable & version-controlled: Works seamlessly with Git, enabling collaboration, history tracking, and reproducibility.
• Web-native: Converts cleanly to HTML, making it ideal for static sites, blogs, wikis, and technical documentation.
• SEO-friendly: Structured content with semantic headings and clean links — perfect for web crawlers and indexing.
• LLM-ready: Its structured yet simple format makes it ideal for prompt engineering, retrieval systems (RAG), and LLM-compatible input/output.
• Toolchain-friendly: Used in GitHub, VS Code, Obsidian, Jupyter, Docusaurus, Notion, and countless static site generators (Astro, Hugo, MkDocs, etc.)
• Future-proof: As the bridge between human-readable text and machine-consumable structure, Markdown is central to the future of technical communication.

Who’s it for?

This quick reference is designed for:

• Developers writing README.md files, changelogs, issue templates, or documentation wikis
• Researchers capturing notes, publishing experiments, or preparing scientific markdown
• Educators creating Markdown-based tutorials, lecture notes, or technical books
• Writers & bloggers using Markdown for content, notebooks, or publishing workflows
• Anyone looking to master Markdown, GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM), or MDX for modern workflows

What’s Inside

This quickref covers:

1. Core Markdown / CommonMark Spec

   1. Headings
   2. Text Formatting (Emphasis)
   3. Paragraphs and Line Breaks
   4. Horizontal Seperator
   5. Blockquote
   6. List (Oredered and Unordered)
   7. Code (inline and block)
   8. Links
   9. Images
   10. Escaping Characters
   11. HTML

2. GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM)

   1. Task Lists
   2. Tables
   3. Emoji
   4. Shields & Badges
   5. Mentions & References

3. Not Supported in Core Markdown or GFM (Extensions Needed)

   1. Equations
   2. Diagrams
   3. Footnotes

4. Editors and Viewers

5. Further Resources

How to Use

• Browse markdown-quickref.md
• Copy-paste examples into your own Markdown files and modify as needed.

License

This Quickref is released under the MIT License © 2025 Vikram Pratap Singh
You are free to copy, modify, and reuse it in your own projects with attribution.

Contributing

Contributions, feedback, and suggestions are welcome!

If you find this project helpful or have ideas to improve it — whether it's fixing a typo, enhancing an explanation, or adding new sections — feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

Before contributing, please take a moment to read the CONTRIBUTING.md guide.