Concentrating on the common things people need helps us to keep creole simple (The KISS principle - Keep it simple and stupid). We can derive those Common Text Elements from analyzing already available markup, but this good practice goes beyond analyzing commonalities in existing markup variants. We also can derive it from material that where created by users and researchers in an effort to improve usability. Usability reports and papers for example provide us with feedback how end users outside the domain of programming and IT actually use markup, and what their problems are.

Here's a list of articles, reports and initiatives that help us find the common things people need:

• "Are Wikis Usable?" (PDF) by Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson, Proceedings of the Wikisym 2005
• Wikipedia Spickzettel (PDF) Cheat Sheet for the MediaWiki Markup - Cheat sheets created by users show us what they found useful and important.

You will find more related material under External Discussion.