Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language for writing human-readable plain text that can be easily converted to HTML (or other formats). It is designed to be both easy for people to read and straightforward for machines to process, providing simple syntax for headings, lists, links, images and code blocks. In web and mobile development, Markdown is commonly used for README files, documentation, blog posts and content that static site generators or headless CMSes render into HTML.

Imagine you're building an open-source web component and add a README.md to your repository. In that file you describe installation using a code block, provide usage examples with headings and a list of props, and add a link to the live demo. When someone views your repository on GitHub, that Markdown is automatically rendered nicely while the raw file remains easy to edit with any plain text editor.