Markdown Editor

Markdown in two minutes

Markdown is plain text with a few conventions that turn into formatting. A line starting with # is a heading — ## for a second-level heading, ### for a third. Wrap words in **double asterisks** for bold and *single asterisks* for italic. Put backticks around `code`. A link is the text in square brackets followed by the address in round ones: [RightYantra](https://rightyantra.com).

Lists are lines starting with a hyphen, or with 1., 2. and so on for numbered lists; indent by two spaces to nest. A line starting with > is a quote. Three backticks on a line of their own open and close a block of code. A table is rows of cells separated by pipes, with a divider row of hyphens under the header. Three hyphens on their own line draw a horizontal rule.

Blank lines matter: they separate paragraphs and blocks. Two lines with no blank line between them join into one paragraph, which surprises people coming from a word processor. Most rendering problems come down to a missing blank line before a list, table or heading.

What this editor supports, and what it does not

The preview is drawn by the same Markdown parser that powers this site's Markdown to PDF converter, so what you see here is what that converter typesets. It handles headings, bold, italic, inline code, links, bulleted and numbered lists with nesting, block quotes, fenced code blocks, pipe tables, horizontal rules and setext headings (a line underlined with === or ---).

Some extensions popular on GitHub are not supported, and it is better to know before you rely on them: strikethrough with ~~, task-list checkboxes, footnotes, reference-style links, automatic linking of bare URLs (wrap them in angle brackets instead: <https://example.com>) and hard line breaks inside a paragraph. Those appear as ordinary text rather than disappearing. Nesting works within one kind of list; a bulleted list indented under a numbered one starts a new list instead.

Two omissions are deliberate. Raw HTML in the source is shown as text rather than run, because a document is untrusted input and live markup inside this site would be a security hole. Images show their alt text instead of the picture, because loading an image from a URL would mean this page making a request to someone else's server, which it never does. Links are kept only for http, https, mailto and tel addresses, so a javascript: link pasted from elsewhere cannot do anything here.

Where your draft is kept

The draft is saved to your browser's local storage about half a second after you stop typing. It never leaves your device: there is no account, no server copy and no sync. Reopen this page in the same browser and the draft is waiting; open it on another device and it is not.

Local storage is wiped if you clear your browsing data, and private or incognito windows usually discard it when they close. Some browsers block it entirely; when that happens, the editor says so under the preview and keeps working, but nothing will survive a reload. For anything you want to keep, download the .md file — it is the only copy that is truly yours. New document clears both the editor and the saved draft, and asks first.

Exporting to HTML and PDF

Download .html gives a complete, standalone web page: the rendered document with a small built-in stylesheet for readable type, tables and code, no scripts and no external files. It opens in any browser and can be emailed or put on a server as it is. The page title comes from your first heading, and so does the file name.

Copy HTML copies just the body markup — headings, paragraphs, lists and tables with no styling — which is what you want for pasting into a CMS, a newsletter tool or a page template that has its own styles.

For a PDF, download the .md file and open it in Markdown to PDF, which typesets the same document with real, selectable text and a choice of page size and font.

Writing tips that save time

Select text before pressing a toolbar button and the formatting wraps the selection; press it with nothing selected and a placeholder is inserted and selected so you can type over it. Pressing Bold on text that is already bold removes the asterisks. The heading button cycles a line through ## and ### and back to plain text. Toolbar changes go through the browser's own editing commands, so Ctrl+Z undoes them like typing.

Use the word count with care for limits: it counts words in the rendered text, not the Markdown symbols, so a heading's # marks and a link's address do not inflate it. The character count is of the source, including the syntax.