Why I use markdown for University – and why you should, too
The question on how to organise your student stuff is not an easy one. In fact, it took me around two years of studying, until I finally found the – at least from my point of view – perfect solution: Markdown. But before I tell you, why I think so, I first want to give a quick overview over what I’ve tried so far and why I ditched all those solution.
- Microsoft Word
The first one being the probably most obvious one: Microsoft Word. I think every student knows it and uses it, probably a few times a week. Word is feature-packed and capable of doing almost everything – but from my point of view, its just to much. You can get stuck in the dozens of menus easily or struggle to do something very simple, while your focus should be at a different point: your work.
Next problem with Word is formatting stuff properly: I think we all know the struggle of defining headings, inserting tables of contents and – especially – inserting images, that bounce around in the whole document. Getting the same look on every new file you create is not very simple, either.
But there’s one thing word is unbeatable in: tables. It’s so easy to present stuff in a clean, structured way or to even create layouts with them. I used tables all the time, since they can basically do anything, that could also be done with HTML. - Notability
Everyone who has an iPad will know this one: Notability. In my opinion, its still the best app available out there for taking handwritten notes. If you’re into that, Notability is the way you should go. But I’m not – my handwriting looks kind of ok, but not very pleasant. Also, I find it a huge struggle having to write everything out by hand and not being able to use copy-paste from scripts or slides.
A a few months ago, the guys over at GingerLabs have also updated the Mac Version of Notability, which turned out to be pretty good: it now has the exact same features the iPad has (guess they just made use of Swifts cross-platform functionality). I now use it to import my lecture slides there, highlighting stuff and making some typed annotations. However, typing possibilities are pretty limited and kind of hard to use, so that’s the only thing I use the app for. - GoodNotes
GoodNotes is the competitor to Notability, when it comes to taking handwritten notes on your iPad. It can basically do the same stuff, but I just like Notability more. - OneNote
When I didn’t own a Mac yet, I tried one semester with OneNote. Since I had a Surface Book back then and also an iPad, I thought it would be a good choice, since its the only app, that is good on both platforms. However, you have to admit, that there also is no real alternative on Windows.
OneNote worked great for me, but it misses one huge feature, that drove me crazy: A4-Pages. I sometimes want to print out my notes or give them to a fellow student – OneNote makes that really hard. Within the App, watching and editing stuff is very pleasant – I especially like the ability, to embed PDFs in the document. The lack of A4 finally ruined OneNote for me. - LaTeX
LaTeX is very powerful, but also has a very steep learning curve. The source code is pretty hard to read and takes a while to create. For big papers, LaTeX is great, but not for daily note taking (although I know some students, that are using it anyways).
So now that all those options failed – let me tell you about the solution to (nearly) all problems: Markdown in combination with the Editor Typora.
Markdown is a markup language like HTML or LaTeX, but much simpler and much more user-friendly. There are just a few commands, which are very comfortable to type and easy to remember. Typora extends the capabilities of markdown and gives you exactly the features, you could miss. You can find a description of all available features on their support-website.
For example, Typora supports Math-Blocks using LaTeX and also standard HTML and CSS directly in your document. With this combination you get the best out of all worlds: you can keep things simple by just using Markdown, but have the freedom to insert something more complex – e.g. an equation – at any given time.
Also, Markdowns source-code is very easily readable – and Typora makes it even better: it renders it live. So you’re always sitting in front of a perfectly styled document. The styling can easily be changed by just switching the used CSS in the menu. And if you don’t like the given options, you can also just create your own CSS-Theme (Typora provides a guide for that).
Every time you open up a new document, the styling now will look exactly the same and can easily be changed within seconds – this makes Typora great for quick and hustle-free note-taking.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| + very easy to learn + you don’t have to deal with formatting + creating documents is very fast and easy + can be exported to various formats such as PDF, HTML, LaTeX, Word, etc. – that way you can also use it to create a simple, static HTML-site + highly customisable when you use your own CSS + small file size + Source-code can be inserted very clean and easy + .md-File can be versioned, so you can work on your document with multiple people by using GitHub/GitLab or similar + very pleasant, distraction-free user-interface | – exporting as a PDF can cause some struggle, since you don’t see where the page-breaks will be – the built-in tables are not that powerful (but you can use HTML to create anything you want) – Hierarchical numbering (with patterns like 1, 1.1, a), 2, 2.1, …) is not that flexible |
Who is markdown for than?
I think, every student working with a lot of text should give Typora a try – for me, it increased productivity heavily. Its also best-suited for people having to deal with formulas or code (there is a build in code-environment with syntax-highlighting for various languages).
However, if you need a perfectly styled PDF, there are better options out there like Word, LaTeX or InDesign.
You can get Typora here and find the documentation here.
Filed under: Software - @ July 27, 2021 5:00 pm