Home > Markup language
2 Features
A common feature of many markup languages is that they intermix the text of a document with markup instructions in the same data stream or file. Here, for example, is a small section of text marked up in HTML:
1 Anatidae
The family Anatidae includes ducks, geese, and swans,
but not the closely-related screamers.
The codes enclosed in angle-brackets are markup instructions, while the text between these instructions is the actual text of the document. The codes "h1", "p", and "em" are examples of structural markup, in that they describe the intended purpose or meaning of the text they include. Specifically, "h1" means "this is a first-level heading", "p" means "this is a paragraph", and "em" means "this is an emphasized word". A device reading such structural markup may apply its own rules or styles for presenting it, using larger type, boldface, indentation, or whatever style it prefers. The "i" instruction is an example of presentational markup. It specifies the exact appearance of the text (in this case, the use of an italic typeface) without specifying the reason for that appearance.
For the humanities, the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) has published some guidelines about how to encode texts.
1.1 See also
- SGML, HTML, HTML element, Z Format XHTML, SMIL, XML, TeX, GML, GRML, YAML, Lightweight markup language, WML, Microbrowser, List of markup languages.
1.2 References
TEI guidelines
Markup languages
