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Plain ASCII is normally sufficient for almost all note taking. One exception, however, are scientific notes which need to be able to contain mathematical symbols and the occasional formula. LaTeX1 is widely used to typeset scientific documents. Org-mode supports embedding LaTeX code into its files, because many academics are used to read LaTeX source code, and because it can be readily processed into images for HTML production.
It is not necessary to mark LaTeX macros and code in any special way. If you observe a few conventions, Org-mode knows how to find it and what to do with it.
[1] LaTeX is a macro system based on Donald E. Knuth's TeX system. Many of the features described here as “LaTeX” are really from TeX, but for simplicity I am blurring this distinction.