GitHub Flavored Markdown

The specific case of “user myopia” in the aforelinked piece from Jeff Atwood was related to Markdown formatting for submissions to Super User. Markdown’s popularity — still growing — is incredibly gratifying. But I never intended for it to be used by people who don’t actually know the Markdown formatting rules. I created Markdown for my own use, and, well, I know the formatting rules pretty well.

For use in situations like user-submitted comments, GitHub Flavored Markdown is a superior variant. It changes just three rules from regular Markdown, all of which make for a better set of formatting rules for people who don’t even know the rules.

★ Friday, 23 October 2009