<ul>
<li>item1</li>
<li>item2</li>
</ul>
<p>some paragraph with an <i>italic</i> word</p>
No need for body and html element, you can inject that afterwards.
I think the most important aspect of markdown is not the syntax but the standardisation of styles. No needing to worry about how to make it look nice it's not only time saving but very helpful when reading hundreds of other people manuals.
Really? The above HTML will look very readable if you just fire it up in a web browser. And if we all agreed on the location of an optional CSS file (e.g. ~/.default.css) anyone would be able to customize how all their documentation looks. It would be totally optional and just make semantically-good HTML go from readable to super-pretty per-user custom themes. Totally optional -- if you don't have it, you'll still have something extremely readable, well more readable than Markdown.
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="~/.default.css">
</head>
... your documentation goes here ...
</html>
The best part? If you don't think <i>this</i> is readable, just double-click and open the thing in a plain-old web browser and it'll be more readable than Markdown.
when it comes to typing, and especially _editing,_ all that markup cruft becomes a distraction (at best), and usually much more like an irritating obstacle. and you glossed over the ’ which needs to sit in the middle of every contraction. like this:
“if you don’t have it, you’ll still have something...”
2) Create a brand new tax for business.
3) Distribute that money proportionally to stars over Github projects.