I’m taking a preliminary exam in about a month so I’m very much embedded in the classics of comparative-historical sociology, as well as more recent revisionist works. As such I haven’t been able to dirty up with my usual nerdery.

But I do tend to have a somewhat unorthodox approach to taking notes, partially inspired by my avoidance of anything formatted in Word, partially rooted in my love of emacs (sorry vi fans). I wanted a lightweight syntax (read, in plain text) for keeping notes that wouldn’t get outdated quickly and wasn’t just some terrible hack that I threw together but wouldn’t understand down the line.

Enter Markdown. Markdown is a simple syntax that stores in plain-text and converts to valid HTML. It allows you to created ordered and unordered lists, define bold and italic words, headings and subheadings, and all other nifty features. What I really like about Markdown is that it makes it very easy to take outlines written in any text editor and turn them into attractive, easy-to-read webpages. It’s flexible enough to work on any computer and quick enough to use in lecture without having to fudge with formatting and idiosyncratic word processor errors.
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