> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.doconda.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What is Markdown

> Markdown is a lightweight markup language that formats plain text with symbols such as # for headings and * for lists.

**Markdown** is a lightweight markup language created by John Gruber in 2004, with Aaron Swartz, for writing formatted
text with readable symbols: `#` for headings, `*` or `-` for lists, `**` for bold. It can be read as is or converted to
HTML and other formats. There are several flavors; **CommonMark** is its strict specification, and GitHub Flavored
Markdown adds tables, among other things.

## Why it matters when generating documents with AI

* Language models write Markdown fluently, because it is common in their training data.
* It describes structure (headings, lists, tables) without the look, which can be applied later with
  [styles](/en/glossary/word-styles).
* It is a good intermediate format: an application can write the content in Markdown and turn it into a Word document
  or a PDF.
* It also works the other way: converting a PDF or Word file to Markdown gives a model the content with its structure
  and fewer tokens.

## With Doconda

You can create a document with `content.markdown`: it supports headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, bold and italics,
links, page breaks and images, and the text is used as is ([Create](/en/guides/create)). The other way,
`POST /v1/extract` turns Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF or images into Markdown, keeping headings, lists and tables
([Read files](/en/guides/extract)).

## Related

* [Word styles vs direct formatting](/en/glossary/word-styles)
* [Structured output vs file output](/en/glossary/structured-output)
* [What is DOCX](/en/glossary/docx)


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