Another nice thing about markdown is that you can pick up the formatting even if reading the markdown in plaintext.

So lists look exactly how you would expect lists to look like if you were writing it on a piece of paper.

Italic/Bolds are surrounded by /* which convey emphasis even in plaintext.

Headings prefixed by # is a reasonable way to depict headings in plaintext and convey the intention immediately even if you don't know Markdown.