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Markdown is a plain text format that uses ordinary punctuation to mean formatting. A line beginning with # is a heading, text wrapped in asterisks is emphasised, and a hyphen at the start of a line makes a bullet. The result is a document that reads perfectly well before anything renders it, which is the whole idea: the source is the draft, not an intermediate step towards one.
It was written in 2004 by John Gruber, with Aaron Swartz, as a way to write for the web without writing HTML. Because the original description left room for interpretation, several flavours grew up around it. CommonMark set out to pin the ambiguities down, and GitHub Flavored Markdown added tables, task lists and fenced code blocks on top of it. The differences are small enough that a file written for one usually renders correctly in another.
Its reach comes from the same simplicity. Every README on GitHub is Markdown, as are most software documentation sites, note-taking applications such as Obsidian and Notion, and the static site generators behind a large share of personal blogs. A .md file is only text, so it survives in version control, shows a readable diff, and can be edited in anything from a code editor to Notepad.
What it does not carry is page layout. Markdown has no notion of margins, fonts or page breaks, which is precisely why converting it matters: turn it into PDF or DOCX and the same words arrive as a formatted document, ready to print, send or hand to somebody who has never heard of Markdown.