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HTML and Markdown aren't right for me. What other text markup types are around?

Hello, power users! I am trying to make a personal wiki/zettelkasten/card index sorta thing to organise my fictional world as well as the rest of my daily life.
I chose Zoplin, which is software I'm quite happy with! It works well, I like the split-screen with the preview on one side. I like the way it continuously backs up. I like that it's all offline and on my computer.
However, there's one issue. Markdown. I am not a big fan of markdown on Discord, but I thought maybe I could just cope with it, the benefits of organisation would outweigh the drawbacks.
However, I really just don't like markdown's reappropriation of different symbols for syntax (the asterix key for bold and italics as is seen here, for one, but Joplin also uses [tab] to make unformatted text which means I cannot make little indents for subsections or whatever)
### So, what alternatives to Markdown exist?
So, I don't want HTML or anything else that does the separating of paragraphs and whatever with tags. Writing DOCTYPE html and `<body>` and `` everywhere is just unappealing for me
HOWEVER, I like HTML's use of `` `` for bold and italics. I'd love a markup format that used this.
I guess what I am asking for is a plaintext (.txt) file with HTML formatting tags added on top of it, rather than a plaintext (.md) file with MarkDown added on top, or a HTML file.
### What markup is closest to my requirements, if any?
![The requirements for a markup, summarised in image form. Compared with HTML and MarkDown.](https://powerusers.codidact.com/uploads/keycjmdcvr84btfrrzg5vlbm3teo)

Hello, power users! I am trying to make a personal wiki/zettelkasten/card index sorta thing to organise my fictional world as well as the rest of my daily life.
I chose [Joplin](https://joplinapp.org/download/), which is software I'm quite happy with! It works well, I like the split-screen with the preview on one side. I like the way it continuously backs up. I like that it's all offline and on my computer.
However, there's one issue. Markdown. I am not a big fan of markdown on Discord, but I thought maybe I could just cope with it, the benefits of organisation would outweigh the drawbacks.
However, I really just don't like markdown's reappropriation of different symbols for syntax (the asterix key for bold and italics as is seen here, for one, but Joplin also uses [tab] to make unformatted text which means I cannot make little indents for subsections or whatever)
### So, what alternatives to Markdown exist?
So, I don't want HTML or anything else that does the separating of paragraphs and whatever with tags. Writing DOCTYPE html and `<body>` and `` everywhere is just unappealing for me
HOWEVER, I like HTML's use of `` `` for bold and italics. I'd love a markup format that used this.
I guess what I am asking for is a plaintext (.txt) file with HTML formatting tags added on top of it, rather than a plaintext (.md) file with MarkDown added on top, or a HTML file.
### What markup is closest to my requirements, if any?
![The requirements for a markup, summarised in image form. Compared with HTML and MarkDown.](https://powerusers.codidact.com/uploads/keycjmdcvr84btfrrzg5vlbm3teo)

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