Markdown is the fastest way to get words down: a handful of punctuation marks instead of commands, and a live preview rendering as you type. This lesson covers everything you need for a full draft.

Step 1 — Create a Markdown document

Create a New Markdown document in your project. You get the text on one side and a live preview on the other — what you see rendered is what will compile.

Step 2 — Structure

Headings are hashes; the count is the level:

# Results

## Fitted parameters

Plain paragraphs are just text with a blank line between them.

Step 3 — Emphasis and lists

This is **bold**, this is *emphasised*, and this is `inline code`.

- A bullet item
- Another one

1. Or numbered
2. Like this

Step 4 — Math

Math uses the same notation as LaTeX — inline between single dollars, display between double:

The measured coupling was $g = 2.03 \pm 0.01$, consistent with theory.

$$
\int_0^\infty e^{-x^2}\,dx = \frac{\sqrt{\pi}}{2}
$$

The preview typesets it live with the same math engine as the rest of the editor, so an equation looks the same here as it will in the PDF. Everything from the LaTeX Writing math lesson — ^, _, \frac, \sqrt, Greek letters — works unchanged between the dollar signs.

> A blockquote — good for a highlighted note.

See the [project page](https://example.org) for the dataset.

That is genuinely most of Markdown. The next lesson adds tables and citations, and turns the draft into a typeset PDF.

Tip: Markdown shines for the writing-heavy phase — notes, first drafts, anything where structure is simple and words are the work. When a document grows real LaTeX needs, the content carries over; you don’t start again.