We simply ignored all of Google Docs’ formatting features, and typed asterisks and underscores and hashes to format as needed. It didn’t need to, for what my editorial teams needed. Then another copy and paste from Google Docs into our content management system would finish the job. There, we’d share the doc, suggest changes and add comments with feedback, proofread and edit until things looked right. We would write in whatever app we preferred, then copy and paste the Markdown-formatted text into Google Docs. Not because it was a great tool for Markdown, per se, but because it is a great tool for commenting and suggesting changes. I’ve used Google Docs as a Markdown editor, of sorts, for the better part of a decade in writing teams. A better option: Use Google Docs as a plain text editor for real Markdown Google Docs, better just as a text editor. It doesn’t work, however, if you want to write in Markdown and use that text elsewhere reliably. That works if you want to use Markdown instead of using keyboard shortcuts to format text. Say you added asterisks around a phrase and Google italicized it to un-italicize it, you’ll need to select the phrase and press CMD-i or tap Google Docs’ i button in the formatting toolbar. It will only turn Markdown into formatting if you’re actively typing in Google Docs.Īnd when you write in Markdown and Google turns into formatting, if you later go back and edit your formatted text, you’ll need to use Google Docs’ buttons or keyboard shortcuts to change the formatting again. If you copy and paste Markdown-formatted text from another app into Google Docs, though, Google Docs will not convert it to Markdown formatting. It works for the basics Google Docs today supports Markdown-style headings, bold, italics, strikethrough, links, and lists. You type one thing, and Google replaces it with what you meant-only this time, it’s replacing characters with formatting. Google Docs’ Markdown support today works exactly like every other automatic substitution or smart quote features. Google Docs turns Markdown into standard rich text formatting Google Docs will then remove the Markdown formatting characters and add the correct standard formatting in their place. Now, in your Google Doc, try adding some Markdown formatting: Add a single hash symbol at the start of a line to start a H1 heading, or add an asterisk before and after a word to italicize it. (It’s still rolling out over the next couple of weeks only one of my three Google accounts showed the option today). Click Preferences in the Tools menu, then check the Automatically detect Markdown option and tap Ok. Google Docs’ new Markdown support comes as a preferences option-and it’s turned off by default. How Google Docs’ Markdown support works Turn on Google Docs' new Markdown feature in Preferences Yet somehow, Google Docs is almost a better Markdown tool if you don’t enable Google’s new Markdown feature. A simple way to format text with text.Īnd now it’s everywhere-including in Google Docs, with a just-released Automatically detect Markdown feature. “It dawned on me: this is madness,” wrote Gruber. Writing blog posts in HTML, copying them into his content management system, only to find a missing HTML tag or miscoded character started getting old. A year before the Writely team released what would become Google Docs, two years before the search giant started building an online office suite, John Gruber wanted a simpler way to write.
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