Perhaps someday there will be computer programs where you can write things without typing in funny codes.<p>TeX embedded in Markdown seems painful.<p>How about writing in a restricted subset of HTML, as some forums (notably Slashdot) allow?  &lt;h1&gt;, &lt;h2&gt;, .., &lt;title&gt;, &lt;p&gt;, &lt;i&gt;, &lt;b&gt;, &lt;blockquote&gt;, and a few others let you do what Markdown does. For math, there&#x27;s MathML: Square root of two: &lt;math&gt;&lt;msqrt&gt;&lt;mn&gt;2&lt;&#x2F;mn&gt;&lt;&#x2F;msqrt&gt;&lt;&#x2F;math&gt;