A recent thread danced around the idea of using LaTeX, markdown, Word, etc. So I thought I’d start a thread here, and perhaps bring up a different perspective that wasn’t mentioned.
Word, Pages, and their ilk have morphed into a blend of word processors and desktop publishing. When you write in Word, you also do formatting, fiddle with fonts, etc. Your words (text) are mixed with their presentation. This can lead to your being distracted from your thoughts by fiddling with the presentation. Also, if you decide to change the presentation of your work, it is often a tedious and laborious process. Especially something like citation formatting.
This is where markdown, LaTeX, and their kin come in. They separate the text from how the text is displayed. When you’re writing, you can give the text meaning, without deciding how that meaning is displayed. For instance, in LaTeX you can say that something should be emphasized by using \emph{this is something dramatic}. Later, when you’re working on the presentation of your document, you can decide what emphasis looks like, bold, italics, green, etc. If you decide emphasis should be blue instead of green, you can make the change in one place and have it change throughout the document. Of course this applies to all other aspects of the document too, such as how intext citations look, the format of the bibliography, etc.
If you’re interested in trying LaTeX, I highly recommend Texpad on macOS or iOS. It’s. A well-featured editor that also stays out of your way.
There are many markdown editors now - I currently use a few for different purposes. Bear gets general notes such as my list of quotations, books to read, etc. Ulysses is where simple documents (without figures, captions, references) are happening at the moment. I also recommend Typora which can be used to make markdown Gantt charts, flow charts, etc.
How do these and other editors fit into your workflow?