Eh, the em example is reductive and makes it seem like markdown doesn't have much advantage.

If you rewrite your comment with lists I think your question becomes self-explanatory.

But you don't need the head and body stuff. This renders perfectly fine in a web browser on my local machine:

    <h1>My Title</h1>
    <p>This is a paragraph.</p>

For sure, you need an end tag, and Markdown doesn't. But for simple note taking, are you really writing deeply nested HTML?

The main benefit is that markdown is really readable _without_ rendering. You don't need to edit and then open in a browser.

You can comfortably read plaintext that has a little structure, while HTML adds some ceremony that makes it a bit harder to glance at the material as the tags are much more in your face.

Totally agree