Markdown itself cannot center text — it has no alignment syntax at all. Where inline HTML is allowed (GitHub READMEs, most documentation generators), wrap the content in a centering tag:
<div align="center">
This text is centered.
</div>
What's the most compatible way to center on GitHub?
The old-school align attribute, not CSS. GitHub sanitizes style= attributes away, so <div style="text-align: center"> does nothing there — but the legacy align="center" attribute survives:
<p align="center">
<img src="logo.png" alt="Project logo" width="200">
</p>
That pattern — a centered logo, then centered badge row — opens half the popular READMEs on GitHub.
Can you center a heading?
Yes, with the same attribute directly on a heading tag, since markdown headings can't take attributes:
<h1 align="center">Project Name</h1>
The tradeoff: HTML headings don't get automatic anchor links in some renderers, and markdown inside HTML blocks isn't always processed (on GitHub, markdown inside a <div> only renders if you leave blank lines around it).
Can you center table columns?
Table columns are the one thing markdown can align natively — put colons on both sides of the divider row:
| Left | Center | Right |
| :--- | :----: | ----: |
| a | b | c |
| Left | Center | Right |
|---|---|---|
| a | b | c |
Our markdown table generator sets these alignment colons for you.
Why doesn't centering work in my renderer?
Renderers that strip raw HTML (many chat apps, comment systems, and strict-mode processors) drop the tags entirely, and there is no markdown fallback. If the document targets one of those, centering simply isn't available — restructure instead (e.g., a heading or a one-cell centered table).