Good point but I took up David’s suggestion straight away as it seemed easier frankly and is applicable in every place I use Markdown, which is three I think at present. I write everything I do initially in a Markdown app now. Even if I don’t use any markdown as such.
I tried it but it did not work for me. The comments didn’t pop. I suppose I could play with stylesheets at some point.
I’ve been using boldface for comments. I rarely use boldface otherwise so it works out. I like the way ia Writer and Ulysses have created separate syntaxes for comments, but alas I no longer use those apps.
I don’t write blogs or web stuff either. I find it most useful for long-form writing, especially when you’re incorporating a bunch of different formatting styles and contents. For example, in my academic writing, I often have to include citations, figures, tables, captions, and different heading levels. I use Scrivener combined with multimarkdown (Pandoc flavour) to sort out all the formatting for me on export and do things like auto-numbering and building my reference list for me. You could technically do this in something like Word, but I find it much more cumbersome.
I agree it’s probably overkill for short form (emails or anything less than a few hundred words), but there’s lots of power for longer form or complex writing tasks. It’s also handy if you plan to export to multiple formats simultaneously. Markdown can be used as a generic format that can then me converted to other formats as desired, which again, is likely overkill for a lot of people.
Here’s a use case that hasn’t been discussed:
At my company, we use an online database meant specifically for recruiting firms, and in it we have hundreds of thousands of records that can only be saved as plain text. This is why I took David’s suggestion years ago. I write my notes in a markdown app that supports live formatting, like Drafts, and then cut and paste it into our database. The markdown formatting goes in as plain text. Yes, the # marks probably annoy other people at the company, but the data is easy to read. If I ever need any old data, I can copy it from the plain-text field and paste it back into any of my markdown apps, and bam I have formatted data again!
2 Likes
Like you, I was a Word guy, because I don’t publish anything to the web. But that changed for me as I started using my iPad and iPhone more and more. I have always hated the laborious process of trying to quickly reference text or make a very, very small change to a Word document on my iOS device. It has always felt like getting in my car to drive to my next-door neighbor, and having to find a parking spot 20 feet from where I left. 
Doing the same thing through a markdown doc via IA Writer or 1Writer is a game-changer. I can get in and out of a markdown doc before I have forgotten why I was opening it in the first place!
2 Likes
I’ve used Typora for a long time. I mostly use VS Code these days, even though I’m a retired non-programmer, mainly for its Github and syntax highlighting extensions. But I’ve not found any good inline preview extensions.
TIL - Drafts app has inline MD preview!?!? How did I not know this? 
1 Like
Drafts is the best!
It has Split Screen too.
1 Like
Stephen mentioned using Byword to write his emails. I’ve tried doing that but when I export/copy to RTF and paste in Apple Mail, the formatting doesn’t come through consistently (no headings, numbered lists, etc…).
Does anyone know of a good app or workflow to be able to write Markdown in Apple Mail (either copy/export from app to mail, or directly in Mail).
Thanks
Check out Markdown Service Tools v3.0 @ BrettTerpstra.com where Brett writes:
Speaking of RTF, the MultiMarkdown to RTF Service is working again! Use it to write in Markdown in apps like Mail.app and TextEdit, then convert it to rich text in place. It will even work in Pages. When you combine all of the emphasis, wrapping, and browser tools with the RTF conversion, writing Markdown in something like Mail.app becomes a real option.
I use MailMate, so this isn’t something that I’ve needed myself, but Brett’s solution is what I would use.
1 Like
I would urge you to try Drafts for this purpose (and many others). It is lightning quick to compose the text in a draft using Markdown and then a single built-in action will populate a draft Email with the RTF version ready to send (The first line in your draft is also used for the Email Subject line).
1 Like
Thanks. I tried using Drafts on the Mac, but I get the message: “HTML Mail Not Supported: Mail action steps cannot send HTML email on macOS at this time. Continue with plain text?”
It does work brilliantly on iPadOS and iOS though, so I will use it there. Any idea on how get it to work on a a Mac? I also use Spark Mail for work on the mac and I have the same issue.
IIRC it’s a Apple thing that might be solved in the future.
You might copy the text as rtf and then paste in the mail client, but am not sure it works
Thanks, but copying as rtf out of Byword and pasting doesn’t work.
How does Ismh (Stephen) use Byword to write markdown emails as he stated in the episode? Perhaps he uses a different email client than Apple Mail?
I’m stumped. Will try MultiMarkdown to RTF Service, but need to install Multimarkdown…
I mean using copy as rtf drafts action and then paste
Thanks, but same problem in Drafts as in Byword. If you copy the markdown as rtf and then paste it into a the body of a mail message, it does not pull in any formatting. I wonder if it’s something weird on my system, of if this happens to everyone. I’m on Mojave.
Hmm now that you mention this I might have the same issue with drafts and apple mail, so it might be a generalized behavior. I’m away from my Mac right now and can’t confirm it
I have an post outline stolen from Michael Hyatt and a paragraph on lead paragraphs as part of my blog post stationery. Both set off in code blocks
I assume, though I never needed to do it, that one could devise a fairly simple regex search and replace that could strip out all the Markdown characters from a section of plain text?
Argh, I’m not having any luck getting Mail to write in Markdown. Byword, nope. Drafts, nope. Just downloaded and installed Brett’s Markdown Service Tools and installed Multimarkdown and I get the error message:
Automator encountered an error running this workflow: “Couldn’t communicate with a helper application.”
Any thoughts? Really hoping to be a able to write or export from a markdown editor to Apple Mail.
Thanks!