[falcolas]

Nit: Markdown was designed to look good both when displayed as Rich Text, and when displayed as plain text.

The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.

[mcguire]

It really is intended to mimic the basic formatting of ye olde plain text writing. Or, at least one style of it.