To the contrary, as someone who hasn't used TeX at all I find it somewhat hard to read the plain-text. The $$$ have more visual weight than the actual formulas.

To the contrary, as someone who hasn't used TeX at all I find it somewhat hard to read the plain-text. The $$$ have more visual weight than the actual formulas. Kind of interesting to see some alternatives and note the visual weight. The back-ticks are by far the best in my opinion. Too bad they are taken by the code blocks! Semicolons are nice though--kind of like a LISP comment. @@ x^2 + 4x = 10 @@ %% x^2 + 4x = 10 %% << x^2 + 4x = 10 >> $$ x^2 + 4x = 10 $$ `` x^2 + 4x = 10 `` '' x^2 + 4x = 10 '' "" x^2 + 4x = 10 "" ;; x^2 + 4x = 10 ;; \\ x^2 + 4x = 10 // ?? x^2 + 4x = 10 ??