Yes, this does look like html in another cloth. I learnt about this from here: https://nofluffjuststuff.com/blog/douglas_crockford/2007/06/...

Compare:

        <strong>important</strong>

with:

        @strong{important}

It looks like some characters saved here. I don't know how much savings would be in the long run.

For big sections, one could use @begin{blah} content here @end{blah}.

It looks a bit plesant in my eyes (than html). And only _one_ special character @, which is repeated twice to escape it.