Most people think that a block of text that is set together is a paragraph, especially as block paragraph format has become the norm for casual and business wri

Most people think that a block of text that is set together is a paragraph, especially as block paragraph format has become the norm for casual and business writing; indented paragraphs are the exception used when you have a layout process and not just depending on your word processor to get it right for you. Email and HTML have not helped this; it is a common expectation that a blank line between two blocks of text represents the paragraph break—at least based on the emails that I've seen over the last two decades. A fundamental philosophy of Markdown is that a Markdown document looks reasonable when sent via email as text or when sent as a formatted web page. That it's flexible enough to be usable for more than just email and HTML is a bonus.