Expand / Once the appropriate characters are entered, it will output a document that will most likely require sharing permissions to be adjusted.
Alrich Lawson | Getty Images
The best time to seriously implement the Markdown markup language in Google Docs was in the early 2010s, but yesterday was a pretty good time too.
Google Docs was born by combining features from a series of software company acquisitions (Writely, DocVerse, QuickOffice), plus the remains of Google Wave, folded into Drive by 2012. At that point, Markdown, a project launched by web writer John Gruber with help from data activist Aaron Swartz, had been established and gaining momentum for about eight years. For another decade or so, writing in Markdown and writing in Google Docs were two different things, connected only via browser extensions or cumbersome import/export tools. Into that gap sprang a myriad of cloud-synced, collaborative, yet Markdown-focused writing tools.
In early 2022, the first connection board was installed. Docs can now “auto-detect Markdown” when enabled, which extends rough support for numbered and unordered lists and checkboxes to larger items like headings, italics, bold, strikethrough, links, etc. Docs allows you to write in Markdown, but you can’t paste in it, and you can’t import or export styles between Docs and Markdown.
Now, or at some point over the next 14 days, you’ll be able to do actual Markdown work in Google Docs, where you can convert Markdown text to the equivalent Docs format when pasting or importing as a file, and you can export to Markdown from the copy menu or file. A Google blog post says this will be “especially useful for technical content writers, as they can now convert their Docs content to Markdown,” with Google’s always-on sync and collaboration coming in the middle.
As someone who doesn’t work as a technical content writer (at least not officially), but who writes a lot, I can say that this will also be especially helpful for those who have adopted Markdown as a sort of One True Style. Even if you work primarily elsewhere, it’s hard not to be invited to collaborate on Google Docs. It’s even harder to remember all the different shortcuts for headings, bullets, and other text elements across different apps, web apps, content management systems, IDEs, and other writing platforms.
There’s no indication of what type of Markdown Google’s import and export features will adhere to, and Ars has not been able to test the new functionality as of July 17. Markdown was intentionally not fully standardized by its creators, which caused some uproar and ultimately led to the understanding that each version, such as GitHub Flavored Markdown, has its own additions and changes.
With the ability to import/export as well as “copy as Markdown” and “paste from Markdown,” Docs is now a place where you can happily interact with others despite your Markdown frustrations.[ツール]>[設定]On the menu[Markdown を有効にする]should be displayed.
