Remembering that Markdown effectively started as a "discovered" syntax instead of an "invented" syntax. ``` Readability, however, is emphasized above all else.

Remembering that Markdown effectively started as a "discovered" syntax instead of an "invented" syntax. ``` Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While Markdown’s syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters — including Setext, atx, Textile, reStructuredText, Grutatext, and EtText — the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email. To this end, Markdown’s syntax is comprised entirely of punctuation characters, which punctuation characters have been carefully chosen so as to look like what they mean. E.g., asterisks around a word actually look like emphasis. Markdown lists look like, well, lists. Even blockquotes look like quoted passages of text, assuming you’ve ever used email. ``` ...at its core, Markdown was a codification of decades of habits found in README.txt files, and "footnote-style links" were unusual but relatively frequently used. They could be with numbers[0] or referring to a short abbreviation like [daring-fireball], and very likely the true origin was how a type-written page would have handled a footnote or reference. [0]: http://example.com/ http://example.com/ [daring-fireball]: https://daringfireball.com/ https://daringfireball.com/