Many people prefer Textile over standard HTML because it is less verbose. Textile is very similar to plain text, but there are a few additional enhancements to make it suitable for hypertext documents.

To see this: Type this:
bold 
*bold*
italics 
_italics_
strikethrough 
-strikethrough-
xsuperscript 
x^superscript^
asubscript 
a~subscript~
code phrase 
@code phrase@
link to Radiant CMS 
link to "Radiant CMS":http://radiantcms.org
JAA 
JAA(Just Another Acronym)
Red Text 
%{color:red}Red Text%

A bulleted list:

  • item one
  • item two
  • item three
 
A bulleted list:
* item one
* item two
* item three

A numbered list:

  1. item one
  2. item two
  3. item three
 
A numbered list:
# item one
# item two
# item three

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

 
h1. Heading 1

h2. Heading 2

h3. Heading 3

h4. Heading 4
Roses are red, violets are blue, Textile is nice, and so are you!
 
bq. Roses are red, violets are blue,
Textile is nice, and so are you!
!http://radiantcms.org/button.png!

Advanced users may want to play around with the official Textile Dingus or review the RedCloth Textile Reference.