Text file written using the Markdown language, a textual markup language used for creating documentation; saves plain text as well as markups that specify how to stylize and format the text (i.e., indentations, italics, headers, etc.); often used for documenting source code for software development projects. Software development projects may include a file named README.mdown that contains the readme for the project. NOTE: Markdown files more commonly use the .MARKDOWN and .MD extensions.