Markdown Tricks Beyond Bold and Italics

Most people learn **bold** and *italics* and stop there. A handful of other Markdown features show up constantly in READMEs, GitHub issues, and note-taking apps, and are worth the two minutes to learn.

Task lists

- [x] Set up repository
- [x] Write README
- [ ] Add tests

On GitHub, GitLab, and most note apps, these render as actual checkable checkboxes — genuinely useful for tracking small to-dos directly inside an issue or PR description.

Tables

| Name  | Role     |
|-------|----------|
| Ada   | Engineer |
| Grace | Manager  |

The dashes under the header just need to be there — exact alignment of the pipe characters doesn't matter, most editors will format it for you.

Code blocks with syntax highlighting

Three backticks followed by a language name turns on proper highlighting instead of plain monospace text:

```python
def greet(name):
    return f"Hello, {name}"
```

Footnotes

Here's a claim that needs a source.[^1]

[^1]: This is the footnote text.

Supported in GitHub-flavored Markdown and most static site generators — useful for citations without cluttering the main text.

Collapsible sections

This one's actually raw HTML rather than Markdown syntax, but it works inside a Markdown file on GitHub:

<details>
<summary>Click to expand</summary>

Hidden content goes here.

</details>