[mixedmath]

I frequently take notes in markdown even though I rarely view it non-plaintext myself. But I use markdown because it's well-suited to conversion to other formats through pandoc, and I sometimes send notes to others (who don't like plaintext/markdown). It's particularly nice to convert to .doc, .docx, and .pdf (through LaTeX).

Perhaps this is a silly reason, but I use vim and I like my markdown syntax highlighting. I rather like reading my plaintext markdown + (default) syntax highlighting. I suppose it would be possible to write/use some txt syntax+highlighting (or some .note format, etc.), but I reinvent the wheel in enough other places to not want to do that here.