I’ve officially joined the cult of Scrivener. Which, btw, it’s on sale right now for $20 instead of the usual $45.

Like other people coming from Markdown, you can use Markdown syntax in Scrivener, export your project to text files, and use Markdown syntax on iOS apps (like my much-loved Byword) ’cause there is no RTF (Scrivener’s native format) on iOS, really.

But, you say, then what?

Beholdify. You can wait to convert your Markdown until the very last second by checking it in the Compile options when you generate your final output.

So for those of us with books and books written in Markdown syntax, we can have it all. Finally.

So?

You’re not one of the Markdown people, I can tell.

…becomes…

This is an h1 heading

This is an h2 heading

This is an h2 too (sorry, couldn’t resist)

This is a paragraph with italics, bold text, and italic bold text. You can also do italics with single asterisks if you swing that way.

And this is another paragraph.

Therefore….

• No fussing with menu bars or character formats.
• No having to remember shortcuts for italics, bold, whatever.

Just. Write.

Which is one reason I’ve liked Markdown all along. It gets out of your way when you’re putting the words on the page.

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.