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+---
+tags: HVAC, general, programming
+---
+
+# You Should Learn Markdown
+
+This is a quick article about why you should learn markdown.
+
+## What is markdown
+
+Markdown is a "mark-up" language. It allows you to write content in plain text that can be easily
+converted to other formats, such as **html, pdf, docx**, and many more. All the articles written on
+this website are written in markdown, here's an image of this article written in markdown.
+
+![markdown](/articles/images/2023-10-21-markdown.png)
+
+The reason you should learn markdown is that it allows you to focus on the content / text of your
+content with simple concepts for formatting. Markdown is used heavily in documenting software
+projects, which is how I got introduced to it, however it can scale all the way up to writing
+research papers or even books.
+
+I use markdown for probably 80% of all the text documents I need to write, from company documents,
+web / software documentation, and so on. It allows me to get content out quickly without having to
+click around with formatting options in a program like **Word** or **Pages**. To be clear, a lot of
+the reports and things I generate for my **Home Performance Assessments** are written using
+**Pages** (for now at least) because I have templates that make the documents look more
+professional, however I am working on solutions to migrate those to be markdown based.
+
+Markdown is supported in mostly all the **Google** tools, as well as the **Outlook** email client
+(which is one of my least favorite tools, BTW). It makes it simple to create tables, lists, and many
+common document related tasks.
+
+## Resources
+
+You can learn more about the syntax used for markdown at
+[markdownguide.org](https://www.markdownguide.org/basic-syntax/).
+
+### A non-exhaustive list of where you can use Markdown and editors.
+
+| Platform     | Description                                                     |
+| ------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------- |
+| Google       | Most goggle tools support markdown, docs, sheets, etc.          |
+| Outlook      | Although I hate outlook email client, it does support markdown. |
+| Dillinger.io | An online tool for writing / previewing markdown                |
+| MarkText     | A multi-platform editor for writing markdown                    |
+
+You can use tools such as [pandoc](https://pandoc.org/#) to convert Markdown files to other formats.
+
+![pandoc](/articles/images/2023-10-21-pandoc.gif)
+
+## Conclusion
+
+I hope that you take the time to research and see if Markdown is good fit for your document /
+content creation.
+
+Thanks for reading until the end!