(author here) I get your sentiment, but I feel an important advantage of this approach is that the markdown file is much more appropriate to put in version con

(author here) I get your sentiment, but I feel an important advantage of this approach is that the markdown file is much more appropriate to put in version control than a Word document would be. Also, the TeX typesetting is just that bit nicer than what you'd get from converting the .doc, but that's perhaps of secondary importance for some :-)