This page offers a brief overview of what it's like to use Markdown.
The [syntax page][syntax] provides complete, detailed documentation for
every feature, but Markdown should be very easy to pick up simply by
looking at a few examples of it in action. The examples on this page
are written in a before/after style, showing example syntax and the
HTML output produced by Markdown.

It's also helpful to simply try Markdown out; the [Dingus] is a
web application that allows you type your own Markdown-formatted text
and translate it to XHTML.

[syntax]: http://markdown.tautua.com/syntax
[Dingus]: http://dingus.com