from http://tips.naivist.net/2006/02/02/word_to_markdown_converter/ Word to Markdown converter
Some smart people who didn’t want to teach users how to code in HTML invented Textile markup language
Someone more lazy invented MarkDown syntax which is much easier to learn. MarkDown is really nice for small content management systems, blogging engines etc.
For instance, to mark text as bold, you write the “bold text” like “bold text”. Other rules can be found in the syntax page.
However, when you have a MS Word document with several pages of bolds, italics and lists, you don’t really want to re-code all the markup.