In reply to Jeff Chandler.

I primarily use visual editor, but will use text editor for various reasons. Usually to double check HTML formatting and manipulate things that visual editor couldn't previously handle. Markdown strikes me as way to manipulate HTML in way that is more simple than HTML markup.

Anyway, I don't know enough about Markdown to comment accurately here, so I'll bow out of this discussion, but just wanted to note that 3.9 / TinyMCE upgrade appears to make for less reliance on having to manipulate text through text editor. Being able to copy / paste from ANY word processor into WP (visual) editor seems like significant upgrade over previous versions of WP. But I recognize that the upgrade is not the end all - be all that my comments are alluding to.

Thanks for your prompt responses!