Why I prefer Markdown over Word Processing Software

Last month I completed my undergraduate engineering studies, with the submission of my Bachelors of Engineering Project, the Project was supposed to be accompanied with a 50 page report of how the project was made and what methodologies were followed.

I wrote my entire draft on an iPad app called “Editorial”. The reason was simple. Editorial provided me with two things; First, Markdown, and secondly, an automation workflow which would properly translate my draft into a Word Document, with proper section headings, et all.

Not only did I wrote those 10,000 word on Editorial, in the last 3 years I’ve switched from writing on iWork’s Pages to writing everything in Markdown, then using a word processor / Page Layout Software / Blogging platform of choice to format it, usually done through a workflow which ensures that I do minimal work.

Why do I prefer Editorial and Markdown? It gives me the freedom to write want I want to, without having to think about the formatting the document. To me that is the major problem that any word processing software has. It tries to do two things at once, it tries to layout the page while you’re writing on it. It’s a tricky balancing act and much less elegant experience to me, than to write first and then use a page layout software to create the layout that I want.

I cannot imagine writing 10,000 words on MS Word. Can you?