Markdown is a markup language and text-to-HTML tool that has been steadily gaining ground as a method for creating consistently formatted and valid, well-formed HTML without having to actually write (or even know about) HTML code. Markdown can also generate RTF, LaTeX, PDF, and a variety of other formats from a single source document. As such, Markdown has tremendous opportunity to simplify many of the format-based issues in academic publishing. Though not without it’s own issues – it is not standardized and has many iterations – incorporation of Markdown into publishing services like Open Journals Systems could allow for simple text markup to replace more specialized or timely processes to create customizable HTML and PDF Galleys for OJS.

This lightning talk reviews basic Markdown syntax, illustrates a few conversion tools and demonstrates how Markdown can be used to create attractice and consistent HTML and PDF Galleys either from scratch or from other source documents.