It does once you need to make a numbered list where some items contain multiple paragraphs, others bulleted sub-lists, yet others images and code blocks. I'm no

It does once you need to make a numbered list where some items contain multiple paragraphs, others bulleted sub-lists, yet others images and code blocks. I'm not saying that's the best way to write a document but sometimes "port this word document to ${markup_language} for our new intranet wiki" comes from higher up and you can't question it. The <ul> tag has one great benefit: you know exactly where the list ends, namely at the </ul> tag. Your pointy-haired boss wants a list 5 levels deep where the second paragraph of item 2.4.1 needs to be at the third level of indentation, but the second paragraph of 3.1.6 needs to be indented only twice because it belongs to the 3.1 item? With opening and closing tags you make the tree structure explicit. Edge cases like this are exactly why there are six flavours of markdown (that and egoism on its creators' part) and in some of them, getting the indentation exactly as required doesn't seem to be possible at all without chucking in HTML tags.