The first Markdown converter was written so that HTML tags in a Markdown file are left alone by the parser. The content inside of block-level elements is also ignored by the parser. This means that <p>**Hello**</p> is converted to exactly that, paragraph tags with “Hello” and some asterisks inside, not paragraph tags wrapping bold tags wrapping Hello.

Using kramdown, Jekyll’s default Markdown converter, you can mix HTML and Markdown. How does this work?

If you want Markdown content inside block level elements to be converted to HTML, simply add the markdown="1" attribute to the opening tag of the block-level element.

<section id="categories" markdown="1">

__Markdown__ getting converted to __HTML__ inside a ___block-level element___.

A list of categories:

- foo
- bar

</section>

Here’s what kramdown does with this section element and its content:

Markdown getting converted to HTML inside a block-level element.

A list of categories:

  • foo
  • bar