alt Hacker NewsThe words "begin" and "end" are very readable, actually. "includegraphics" as well. Remains the aversion against backslashes. What exactly do you find less readable about them than other symbols like for example the colons or braces in Quarkdown? Or is it about the number of backslashes?
Actually, no, if markup takes more space than content, it hurts readability of the content. Especially for such common stuff like images.
But if you don't see this obvious barrier, I will unlikely be able to explain the issue with backslashes: it's partially about the number, but also visibility - .period syntax is a smart choice as it's unobtrusive and not part of the regular syntax, and it's more ergonomic to type, so a universal win.