Markdown has lots of syntax from irc/email that folks have been using for decades. The popularity is also due this, it was partially a refinement rather than in

Markdown has lots of syntax from irc/email that folks have been using for decades. The popularity is also due this, it was partially a refinement rather than invented. This is also why the parsing ambiguity/backtracking ends up occurring - humans can read plaintext and do pattern matching with context/attention whereas parsing algorithms have a hard time.