Markdown
Cheatsheet!
Markdown is pretty damn simple to write, possibly harder to understand.
Markdown was initially created by John Gruber (of Daring Fireball) as a simple way for non-programming types to write in an easy-to-read format that could be converted directly into HTML. Lifehacker
You may have heard of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) formatting.
Think of Markdown like a simplified WYSIWYG ... When web designers and developers approach a project, they build styles into the project. Those styles dictate how basic elements, like headers and links will appear.
WYSIWYG editing tools gave away too much design control. Someone could unknowingly add a new style to the design (like red italic bold headers) without meaning to... This makes designers sad :( because their carefully crafted theme gets lost in the noise.
Bottom line, people who edit content should focus on the words and the designer should make them pretty... When a designer pushes a new style to the website, the styles are consistently reflected across the whole site, so the design stays fresh and up to date with browser caveats and features. (Dropshadows anyone?)
Markdown is widely accepted by developers and editors, so it's the best choice for implementing best practice. Nearly every popular content management solution supports Markdown, if not out-of-the-box, then with an easy-to-install extension. What is Markdown?
Anyway, what you probably want are commands, and I will show you!
Headers
Of Different
Sizes
super emphatic
really italic
Automatic character escaping & stuff! *literal asterisks*
...You get the idea.