The original Markdown specification from John Gruber doesn't provide any special syntax for tables. However, he provided a workaround. It is to use HTML code inside Markdown code. For example, to add an HTML table to a Markdown article:
This is a regular paragraph. <table> <tr> <th>Header1</th> <th>Header2</th> </tr> <tr> <td>data1</td> <td>data2</td> </tr> <tr> <td>data3</td> <td>data4</td> </tr> </table> This is another regular paragraph.
This workaround defeats its philosophy: "make Markdown code easy to read for humans".
Other developpers have extended Markdown specification to also include table. The syntax looks like the followings:
| Header1 | Header2 | | ------- | ----------- | | data1 | data2 | | data3 | data4 |
It will render as: