mention syntax highlighting

Author: hjwp

en/code_editor/README.md

@@ -23,3 +23,16 @@ Sublime Text is a very popular editor with a free evaluation period. It's easy t
 Atom is an extremely new code editor created by [GitHub](http://github.com/). It's free, open-source, easy to install and easy to use. It's available for Windows, OSX and Linux.
 
 [Download it here](https://atom.io/)
+
+
+
+# Why are we installing a code editor?
+
+You might be wondering why we are installing this special code editor software, rather than using something like Word or Notepad.
+
+The first is that code needs to be **plain text**, and the problem with programs like Word and Textedit is that they don't actually produce plain text, they produce rich text (with fonts and formatting), using custom formats like rtf.
+
+The second reason is that code editors are specialised in editing code, so they can provide helpful features, like syntax highlighting, or automatically closing quotes for you.
+
+We'll see all this in action later.  Soon, you'll come to think of your trusty old code editor as one of your favourite tools :)
+

en/python_introduction/README.md

@@ -88,7 +88,7 @@ OK, enough of strings. So far you've learned about:
 
 - __the prompt__ - typing commands (code) into the Python prompt results in answers in Python
 - __numbers and strings__ - in Python numbers are used for math and strings for text objects
-- __operators__ - like + and *, combine values to produce a new one
+- __operators__ - like + and \*, combine values to produce a new one
 - __functions__ - like upper() and len(), perform actions on objects.
 
 These are the basics of every programming language you learn. Ready for something harder? We bet you are!
@@ -417,6 +417,9 @@ Earlier, we picked out a code editor from the [code editor](../code_editor/READM
 print('Hello, Django girls!')
 ```
 
+> **Note** You should notice one of the coolest thing about code editors: colours!  In the Python console, everything was the same colour, but now you should see that the `print` function is a different colour from the string inside it. That's called "syntax highlighting", and it's a really useful helping hand when coding.  Watch out for the colour of things, and you'll get a hint for when you forget to close a string, or make a typo in a keyword name (like the `def` in a function, which we'll see below).  This is one of the reasons we use a code editor :)
+
+
 Obviously, you're a pretty seasoned python developer now, so feel free to write some code that you've learned today.
 
 Now we need to save the file and give it a descriptive name. Let's call the file **python_intro.py** and save it to your desktop. We can name the file anything we want, the important part here is to make sure the file ends in __.py__, this tells our computer that this is a **python executable file** and Python can run it.