Micro.blog uses Markdown for styling and links in your blog posts. We have a 
Markdown reference. But why?
We use Markdown because it’s a simple syntax that matches how many people already write in plain text. It’s natural to italicize text by surrounding it with _, or make a list by using * on each line. But even more importantly, we use Markdown because it scales up to anything you need to do.
From the official Markdown page on Daring Fireball:
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.
I actually think this undersells it. Markdown is a format that bridges plain text and the open web.
Markdown starts simply, to make blogging approachable to all users, and then it expands to everything the web can do. Markdown can also use any HTML tag. There doesn’t need to be special markup for less common formatting and layout because you can just use HTML for that.
This means that you are never boxed in with someone else’s special syntax or user interface widgets. Yes, it’s a little more of a learning curve for advanced styling, but anything is possible. Most blog posts are simple, needing nothing more than a link or two, and there’s no need to switch to a different mode if you need more.