In Praise of Lightweight Markup
What is it?
I’d like to tell you about something called lightweight text markup, which I think people could benefit from using more of. Basically, it is a way to write formatted text. You write your text in a plain text file, then certain formats like bold and italic can be added by adding symbols to this file.
There are many kinds of text markup, but by far the most popular is Markdown.
A guide to Markdown
Org Mode, another less popular one that I use sometimes
Why is it great?
There are many reasons why lightweight markup is great!
- It is extremely simple to learn and use. No need to be super precise about formatting!
- It is compatible with many different programs, from basic pre-installed programs like Notepad to technical behemoths like Emacs and Vim. Word documents, on the other hand, only work with one program officially, and a few others unofficially.
- File sizes are extremely small, even for large documents.
- It’s very easy to use this with other programs. Most LLMs/AI chatbots use Markdown to write your responses, for example.
How do I use it?
Just open a plain text file in any of the editors I’ve suggested (or your favourite), and write your text. Basic Markdown formatting looks like this:
**bold**
*italic*
[link description](link url)
`code`
> quote
# heading
## subheading
### subsubheading
* list item (unordered)
1. list item (ordered)
A full guide to the Markdown syntax
Programs you can use
You can create edit these files with any text editor.
I will only recommend free and open source software, as software freedom ensures that programs can be publicly audited and undesired changes can be removed – if not by you, then someone else has probably already done it. This is one example of the decentralization I talked about previously:
Decentralization is about Redundancy
Some examples of programs you can use:
Wikipedia has an entire list of them:
List of text editors