It's not "reddit markup", it's just Markdown. A rather common format, not specific to Reddit. And honestly, I wish HN would grow a few features in this area — l

It's not "reddit markup", it's just Markdown. A rather common format, not specific to Reddit. And honestly, I wish HN would grow a few features in this area — links and blockquote would be really nice. It'd be good to have common formatting s.t. common formatting can just get out of the way, so that we can all focus on the discussion, instead of parsing text with our eyeballs. (FWIW, M↓ is supposed to be lightweight enough that it's readable inline. The links can get a little long, but I think it's not too hard to skip, and it does have the upshot of not making you have to match up citation numbers. But you're right that the numbered format is more common among posters.)