Acknowledgements

This book would not exist without the open-source community that created and continues to maintain the tools it relies on: John Gruber and Aaron Swartz for the original Markdown specification; John MacFarlane for Pandoc, which powers the publishing pipeline; and the teams behind CommonMark, GitHub Flavoured Markdown, and the many editors, tools, and platforms that have made plain-text writing a practical choice for people who have never opened a terminal.

Thanks to the readers of early drafts for their honesty and encouragement, and to the many writers who shared their Markdown workflows over the years. Your questions shaped what ended up in this book.

And to my children — thank you for the hugs when I needed them most, and for the quiet when I needed that too.

[TODO: Add specific names with permission before final publication.]