I'm a huge fan of Markdown because it frees up extra taps/pecks on the keyboard with the knowledge that my final document is portable and understandable in its

I'm a huge fan of Markdown because it frees up extra taps/pecks on the keyboard with the knowledge that my final document is portable and understandable in its raw unrendered plain text to non-techies. I expect all my documents to be web friendly also. Markdown ensures that extra tweaks (more work) will not be necessary when rendering my MD file for the web. Blockquotes inside paragraphs are harder on the eyes - best kept as block elements for web reading. Inline quotes are sufficiant for snippets of quotes within paragraphs - for most use-cases. Markdown keeps things simple while enforcing good web writing practises for non-HTML folks or those of us who just want to focus on content and not tags in my opinion. I guess the semantic web is less a concern for me with Markdown because I'm focused on the final deliverable, a willing trade-off of a little non-semantic for the portability and readability benefits. The bottom line for me is producing content with the least barriers. MD always seems to fit the bill.