Well, let me tell you how I use the terms:

when I write (and need to write anything of length (say 500-1000 words or more), I typically will use text programs to write. On a mac, my favorite is Scrivener, but on an ipad, I use Byword, Phraseology, or Plaintext.

I don't really need to format my writing (and I find it to be a distraction to format much as I am writing beyond paragraph breaks and the like. So it is helpful to me to just write 70-80% of what I need to do and then bring it into to Word to format later.

The apps above gave very basic formatting (underline, bold, font choices, etc.) but no "keep with next" and stuff like that.

I think of a text editor as a program that edits plain text only. So no formatting at all. But I'm coming from a programming point of view, where code is always in plain text.

the apps above save in plain text, but use multi-markdown.

except scrivener!

I'd never heard of multi-markdown. Is that what the kids are into these days?

I feel old.

tommy,

I am not sure how old you are, but I bet I'm older than you. If you are younger than ita, then I win!

Multimarkdown is just a language (mostly for writers) that can speed up html language. If you aren't doing a lot of fancy html (or in my case, academic writing that doesn't involve a lot of complicated stuff), MM is wonderful.

It's like the quick edit here.

I'm 47, which makes me older than ita !, at least.

Thanks everybody, and especially le_nubian, for the explanations. On my PowerBook I had mostly been using Text Edit which seems to be a bit of a hybrid. Most of my writing is fan fiction, so the formatting is pretty basic. Bold and italics are helpful but don't always carry through to the sites I post to anyway. I do write the occasional business letter, but that is pretty much it. So maybe all I really need is a text editor. I'm going to look at the ones you mentioned, le_n.

Thanks again!

damn tommy! you have me beat.

but not by much...

Digg Sells for $500K.

The $500,000 purchase price amounts to pennies on the investment dollars that poured into the once popular news aggregation site. Digg raised $45 million over six years from Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, and venture firm Greylock Partners.

I haven't been to the digg website in many years.

So it's all my fault.