If I need a level of control over the text that Markdown doesn't offer, I break out the HTML+CSS. I cheat by using made up context-specific semantic elements so

If I need a level of control over the text that Markdown doesn't offer, I break out the HTML+CSS. I cheat by using made up context-specific semantic elements so I don't have class="foo" everywhere, and the result is pretty structured and not hard for a clueful novice to understand. It's also not that hard to move from Markdown to HTML incrementally, and generally unnecessary at all for long prose sections if you're not averse to having mixed HTML/Markdown source. To me, RST smells very much like XML for people who don't want to admit they're writing XML. It superficially has the appearance of being "normal" plain text writing, but that illusion is fragile if you're not familiar with the language. IMO, it's akin to COBOL or SQL in that way.