* for italic, ** for bold. This is pretty standard on the internet in my experience.

Links are [](), but I do mess that up sometimes as well.

Markdown is not inconsistent though, and I find it very readable.

> * for italic, * for bold.

I think something ate one of your *s. One star or underscore for italic; two stars or underscores for bold.

> Links are [](), but I do mess that up sometimes as well.

If you use the "remote ref" style[1], links are `[text][ref]` which is much easier (I remember the order as "this [text] points to that [ref]").

[1] https://www.markdownguide.org/basic-syntax/#reference-style-...

> I think something ate one of your *s.

That's because HN supports stripped version of Markdown and supports italic with one *, but not bold with **. You have to escape it with \.

Ah thanks. I didn't notice I was missing a *.

I find it readable, but not that much more readable than plain old HTML with all styling relegated to a separate stylesheet, and using only the basic set of elements e.g. <h1>-<h6>, <a>, <img>, <p>, <pre>, etc.

I find HTML far more writeable than Markdown, however, as all things have a consistent syntax.