[O] Semantics of the colon (can it be considered a general markup element?)

[Leo Alekseyev]

I started prefixing certain lines with the colon (:) in my org-files,
because it is a convenient way to get "verbatim" behavior.  It has
advantages over markup such as =code= or ~verbatim~ in that it looks
better, can be used with text that spans multiple lines, and actually
ignores org-markup (for instance ~[[foo]]~ in org-mode will still turn
foo into a link, whereas : [[foo]] will render verbatim).

The question that I have is this: is that a legitimate / intended use
of the ":" markup?  I haven't seen it discussed in the docs, and only
found its existence when org-babel results blocks started returning
lines prefixed with ":".  I think having a general lightweight syntax
for verbatim lines is very desirable, and if ":" indeed fits this
role, it should be mentioned in the manual under "markup" (since it is
a logical place to turn to when looking for verbatim/comment
constructs).

--Leo