Oh, SJ, believe me, you don't want to get me started on what I think of wiki code. Actually "code" is a generous word to call it. Any markup language, of necessity, makes content more difficult to read (for people, although computers have no problem with it) because it is inserting formatting instructions inline with the content that will be displayed. Even a computer, though, needs to be able to differentiate between the content and the instructions.
Legitimate markup languages use things called tags to contain instructions by enclosing them between tag start and end characters. For HTML, the "<" (less than symbol, often called left angle bracket, typically upper case of the comma on most English keyboards) is the start of a tag and the ">" (greater than symbol, often called right angle bracket, typically upper case of the period on most English keyboards) is the end of a tag. Whatever is between those symbols is an instruction to be followed and not to be displayed.
There are two kinds of tags - container and empty. Container tags operate on document content, so it is necessary to have a start and end version of these tags in order to "contain" the document content to which the instruction applies. One example is that you may want some text to be bold - HTML uses the <b> start tag and the </b> end tag for this … for example, the word(s) contained by the bold <b>tag set</b> will be displayed as bold and the text before and after it will not be bold.
Note how HTML also uses the same tag for start and end, except puts a / (forward slash, typically lower case of question mark at right of bottom row on most English keyboards) at the beginning of the end tag. In the case of an empty tag - one that does not operate on document content, but is a different kind of formatting command - HTML uses a sort of shorthand for a start and end tag all wrapped up in a single tag - an example is <br /> used to force a new line at the point where it is placed (think of it as a line break). This has the tag name, followed by a space, then ending with a /.
The big difference between a real markup language like HTML and wiki hocus pocus is that HTML is consistent - ALL instructions are in tags and all tags follow the same rules. Wiki garbage uses some of the same tags as HTML (<br /> is one of these) but also designates certain characters as codes when they are used in very specific ways … if they're used in other ways then they are interpreted as document content to be displayed, rather than formatting instructions to be followed. Probably the most extreme absurdity is bold and italic. If you type an apostrophe or a quote (that looks like a double apostrophe), it is part of your document content. If you type two apostrophes in a row, that starts italic and the rest of your document will be displayed in italic text until you type two apostrophes in a row again to end italic. Note that the edit page looks like there is a quote where it is really 2 apostrophes, making it nearly impossible for you to differentiate between code and content. The only way to be sure which it is requires you to move your curser across the text to see if it's 2 apostrophes or 1 quote mark!!! Next, we get to bold, which is the same thing, except 3 apostrophes … and if you want bold and italic, then you use 5 apostrophes.
Most of the characters that vary between code and content follow the rule that if they are the first thing on a new line then they are code, otherwise they are content. So … if you start a line with an asterisk, it will make that paragraph a bulleted item. If you want to start a line with an asterisk, you have to first type a space, then the asterisk, to make it content. The same is true for #, :, and =, with = being an entire kludge all by itself, where the number of equal signs represents hierarchical heading levels … ah, but I'm already up to indigestion and don't have the stomach to keep going.
