Markdown is the plain text markup syntax developed by John Gruber of Daring Fireball over 10 years ago to help bloggers write in a readable format that could be easily converted to HTML. Since then it has grown in popularity and spawned a whole ecosystem of applications and tools for the easy management and production of Markdown formatted documents.

The syntax is simple to learn but if you want a nice concise set of quick video tutorials then Wes Bos has put together a set of 11 short ( between 1 and 6 mins long ) guides that take you quickly through the basics of Markdown to get you up and running with minimal effort.

link : Mastering Markdown