Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language: you write headings, lists, links, and emphasis in plain text (#, *, [text](url)), and a parser turns it into HTML. John Gruber published it in 2004 so writing for the web could stay readable in a text editor.

It is not CSS (how it looks) and not JSON (how machines exchange data). It is how humans draft. GitHub READMEs, Slack, Reddit, many CMS editors, and llms.txt files are Markdown. You still ship HTML to the browser; Markdown is the source. UX writing loves it because the file looks like the words people will read.

A real-life example of Markdown

A Midtown studio writes the weekly blog in Markdown in the CMS: ## Hours, a bullet list, a link to the booking page. The site renders HTML. The same studio keeps /llms.txt in Markdown so an assistant can read a clean map instead of a mega-menu. Nobody hand-codes <h2> for a Tuesday update.

Write in Markdown, preview, publish. The long version: Markdown: The Lightweight Markup Language. For the words inside the product, UX writing and microcopy.