What's the difference between markdown variants?

CommonMark provides the standardized baseline that everyone agrees on. GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) layers in tables, task lists, automatic URL detection, and strikethrough. MultiMarkdown adds academic features like footnotes and math equations. Discord and Slack each have their own variants for chat. Most tools have settled on GFM as the practical standard worth targeting.

How do I format text?

Wrap text in double asterisks or underscores for bold, single asterisks or underscores for italic, backticks for inline code, and tildes for strikethrough. Square brackets followed by parentheses build links — bracketed text, then URL in parentheses. Headings use one or more hash marks at the start of a line. Lists begin with dashes for bullets or numbers followed by a period for ordered items, and blockquotes start with a greater-than sign.

How do I add code blocks?

Fence the block with three backticks on opening and closing lines. Add a language identifier right after the opening fence to enable syntax highlighting — three backticks followed by 'javascript' produces a highlighted JavaScript block. Inline code uses single backticks around the snippet. This is essential for technical documentation where code clarity matters.

Can markdown have tables?

GFM and most modern markdown processors support tables. Pipe characters separate columns, with a row of dashes below the header row defining the table structure. Alignment markers — colons in specific positions — control whether each column aligns left, right, or center. Tables are a standard part of any modern markdown workflow.

Why does my markdown look different in different places?

Different parsers handle features differently. GitHub renders GFM with its specific extensions, Reddit applies its own flavor that includes things like subreddit auto-linking, and CMS platforms often layer custom extensions on top. The pragmatic approach is to pick a specific target flavor for any given project rather than trying to write markdown that renders identically everywhere.

Should I use markdown for blog posts?

Plenty of platforms support it natively — Jekyll, Hugo, Gatsby, Next.js, and Ghost all treat markdown as their primary format, and WordPress accepts it through plugins. The benefits are real for technical writers — version control, plain-text portability, low writing friction. WYSIWYG editors remain easier for non-technical contributors, so the right choice depends on your team.

Is the data sent to a server?

Most preview tools parse markdown client-side using libraries like marked.js, so the processing happens in your browser without uploading anything. Your text never leaves the device, which makes the tool safe for drafts, internal docs, or any content you'd rather not transmit.

Markdown Preview

Preview Markdown text rendered as HTML online with live updates. Free Markdown previewer supporting tables, code blocks, and images.

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Markdown

Preview

Welcome to Markdown Preview

This is a markdown preview tool.

Features

Live preview
Easy to use
Free online

Code Example

console.log("Hello!");

This is a blockquote

Visit Example

How to Use Markdown Preview

Type or paste markdown

Input markdown text using standard syntax — hash marks for headings, double asterisks for bold, single asterisks for italic, dashes for bullet lists, triple backticks for code blocks, and so on.

View live preview

The renderer converts markdown to HTML in real time, showing the formatted result as you type. The side-by-side layout displays the markdown source alongside the rendered preview for easy comparison.

Test variants

Switch between markdown flavors like CommonMark and GFM to see how each parses your input. GitHub specifically uses GFM, so target that flavor when authoring READMEs or repository documentation.

Copy or export

Copy the rendered HTML, the formatted plain text, or the original markdown. Export options typically include downloadable HTML files, PDF generation through a separate tool, or pasting straight into any markdown-aware platform.

When to Use Markdown Preview

Markdown writing

Drafting markdown without a live preview means flipping back and forth between raw syntax and the rendered version, hoping nothing got mangled. A side-by-side preview shows headings, lists, links, code blocks, and images updating in real time, so blog writers, documentation authors, and README maintainers can trust what they're producing.

GitHub README authoring

GitHub renders markdown with its own extensions — tables, task lists, strikethrough, syntax-highlighted code — and a generic preview tool can mislead you about how a README will actually look. A GFM-aware preview matches GitHub's behavior closely enough that what you see locally is what visitors see on the repo page.

Note-taking and documentation

Engineering teams have largely standardized on markdown for technical notes, meeting summaries, and knowledge base articles. Previewing as you type catches formatting mistakes early, especially in nested lists, code blocks, and tables where small syntax errors produce ugly output.

Learning the syntax

Anyone new to markdown picks it up faster with a preview running alongside their input. Seeing exactly which characters produce a heading, a bold word, or a numbered list builds intuition quickly — much faster than studying a syntax cheat sheet in isolation.

Markdown Preview Examples

Basic formatting

Input

# Hello\n**Bold** *italic* [link](url)

Output

Renders a large 'Hello' heading followed by bold and italic text and a clickable link.

This covers the core building blocks every markdown processor understands. Hash for headings, double asterisks for bold, single asterisks for italic, and bracket-paren pairs for links — the same syntax across nearly every tool that reads markdown.

Code blocks

Input

```javascript\nconsole.log('hi');\n```

Output

A syntax-highlighted JavaScript code block in monospace, with language keywords colored.

Adding a language identifier after the opening fence triggers syntax highlighting. Modern processors recognize over a hundred languages, and the visual distinction between keywords, strings, and identifiers makes technical documentation dramatically more readable.

GitHub Flavored Markdown

Input

- [ ] Todo\n- [x] Done

Output

Rendered checkboxes — one empty, one checked — exactly as they appear on GitHub.

Task lists, tables, strikethrough, and automatic URL detection are GitHub's extensions on top of CommonMark. Most modern tools have adopted them as a de facto standard, so writing in GFM tends to work everywhere worth caring about.

Tips & Best Practices for Markdown Preview

1.Match your preview flavor to the destination. GitHub uses GFM, Reddit applies its own variations, and some CMS platforms have custom extensions. Check the actual rendering occasionally to avoid surprises.
2.Use blank lines between paragraphs. A single newline often gets treated as the same paragraph, while a blank line creates a true paragraph break — confusing the two is one of the most common formatting mistakes.
3.Always specify a language tag on your code blocks. Without it you get monospace but no syntax coloring; with it readers get the visual cues that make code easier to scan and understand.
4.Tables benefit from explicit alignment markers. The pipe-and-dash syntax with optional colons controls whether each column reads left, right, or center — small detail, big improvement in readability.
5.Backslash-escape literal asterisks and other special characters. Without escaping, a stray asterisk turns half your sentence into italic, which is especially awkward when you're documenting markdown itself.
6.Long documents deserve a table of contents. Headings naturally become anchor targets, and many tools auto-generate the TOC from heading structure, which keeps it accurate as the document grows.

Frequently Asked Questions

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that uses simple text characters to indicate formatting — asterisks for emphasis, hash marks for headings, dashes for lists. John Gruber created it in 2004, and it's since become the de facto standard for GitHub READMEs, technical documentation, blog posts, and notes. The syntax is easy to pick up, plays nicely with version control, and produces files that remain readable even without a parser.

Markdown Preview

Welcome to Markdown Preview

Features

Code Example

How to Use Markdown Preview

Type or paste markdown

View live preview

Test variants

Copy or export

When to Use Markdown Preview

Markdown writing

GitHub README authoring

Note-taking and documentation

Learning the syntax

Markdown Preview Examples

Basic formatting

Code blocks

GitHub Flavored Markdown

Tips & Best Practices for Markdown Preview

Frequently Asked Questions

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