What is Markup? Reflection

My reflection on “What is Markup?”

HTML is a commonly used markup language. This week’s reading explored another language called Markdown. Markup is, to put it briefly, the general formatting of a document. HTML and Markdown are two markup languages that have different ways of “marking up” a document, as in they have different ways to process and present documents. It seems odd and counterintuitive that a markup language is called Markdown. In actuality, looking at the concept of Markdown can ease that confusion. The concept behind Markdown is that the language is simpler to write in, so the formatting of the documents would require less complicated markups.

This article here is a guide for getting started with Markdown and introducing its various applications. Using my Google Chrome browser, I can press ctrl + U or view page source and the HTML document for the page will show up in another tab.

Comparing the images shown in the article for the Markdown format to the HTML code, Markdown is significantly easier on the eyes because of its simplicity in formatting. Some advantages to Markdown is that the language is typically converted to display as HTML, which is a common markup language most people would be able to understand, so it does not require one to write in the HTML language in order to develop and display web applications.

As mentioned in this week’s reading, tags are incredibly important to the HTML language for formatting. Messing up the tags in the confusing HTML syntax can cause frustration for many people. In Markdown, the need for the proper tags around blocks of text, lists, and headings would not be as much as a concern because of its ease of use. However, having the ability to read HTML is an essential skill. By viewing the HTML document for the Markdown guide’s page, I can see <em> tags that are used around “Markdown processor” and “Markdown application” and <strong> tags around “Note.” There is also a great number of href tags throughout the HTML page source document. The paragraphs on the actual page also correlate with the <p> tags displayed on the HTML document as well. In addition to these tags, the two most important tags emphasized in this week’s reading was <div> and <span>. The page source document shows the web page makes good use of the <div> tag for separating the document into sections for the large blocks of text.

Using tags is the way that HTML organizes data. The specifics of each tag is vital to organizing the text so the computer understands what the writer wants. In contrast, Markdown requires much less specifics. As a plus, the applications for Markdown include more than website content such as note taking, presentations, and documentation.

In the end, HTML and Markdown are only a few of the many markup languages available. Depending on what someone’s goals are, neither language may be good. It is up to the individual to choose which language they would need to serve their purposes.