Textile and Markdown are text formats. A very simple text format.
Another stab at making readable text that can be converted to HTML.

No need to use verbose HTML to build your docs, your blogs, your pages.
Textile gives you readable text while you're writing and beautiful
text for your readers. And if you need to break out into HTML, Textile
will allow you to do so. Textile also handles some subtleties of
formatting which will enhance your document's readability:

* Single- and double-quotes around words or phrases are converted to
curly quotations, much easier on the eye. "Observe!"

* Double hyphens are replaced with an em-dash. Observe -- very
nice!

* Single hyphens are replaced with en-dashes. Observe - so cute!

* Triplets of periods become an ellipsis. Observe...

* The letter 'x' becomes a dimension sign when used alone. Observe:
2 x 2.

* Conversion of ==(TM)== to (TM), ==(R)== to (R), ==(C)== to (C).