Pointless affectation. If I'm writing for print publication I'm probably using different software (or submitting electronically to someone who does); on the web and in email, plain text is still the norm. I don't care if other people do it (so long as they do it correctly rather than inserting garbage characters by accident), but I'm way too lazy to use non-mneumonic codes for things that really don't make a difference. Heck, I don't even do accents and umlauts (I would if someone made it very easy for me), and that's way more important.
(no subject)