Markdown Text Conventions
Markdown FTW
You’ll need a good markdown text editor. Not MS Word! A text editor will let you write without any hidden cruft mucking up your files. You’ll use the text editor for the free-writing portion of the fall semester. You will save-as your writing with the .md text extension.
I will suggest that you use Obsidian but other options are possible; the key thing is that something like Obsidian will let you make internal links from one piece of writing to another (and if you change the text of the link, or the title of the file, Obsidian will update all of your links accordingly).
You will use markdown conventions to provide some minimal styling to your work.
You’ll then drop these in the folder I will set up for you so that your writing can become part of our digital garden.
Minimal Formatting for Markdown:
You can have lists like this
- first
- second
- third
Or checklist lists to
- [ ] ==Get==
- [ ] things
- [ ] ~~done~~
You can make headers using the # like this:
# Really Big Header
## Level Two Sub Header
### Level Three Sub Header
If you forget the space between the # and the text, congratulations, you’ve made a
#tag
#tag/subtag
In the right-hand sidepane in Obsidian, you can also view a tag explorer to help you navigate your materials.
You can make a link to another note in your vault by typing [[ and then scroll through the popup of note titles, or start typing the name of a new note you want to make at that spot; eg [[this note doesn't exist yet]] but if I clicked on that link in Obsidian I’d get a new note with that title.
You can make a link to a website like this: [link text](https://some.website.com) changing up ‘link text’ and the url, obviously. nb there is no space between the square bracket bit and the parentheses.
Within obsidian, you can drag and drop images right in. This will create a copy of the image inside your vault. Then, start typing:
