Editing Markup language (section)

=== Descriptive markup ===
: Markup is specifically used to label parts of the document for what they are, rather than how they should be processed. Well-known systems that provide many such labels include [[LaTeX]], [[HTML]], and [[XML]]. The objective is to [[Separation of content and presentation|decouple the structure]] of the document from any particular treatment or rendition of it. Such markup is often described as "[[Semantic HTML|semantic]]". An example of a descriptive markup would be HTML's <code>&lt;cite></code> tag, which is used to label a citation. Descriptive markup — sometimes called ''logical markup'' or ''conceptual markup'' — encourages authors to write in a way that describes the material conceptually, rather than visually.<ref>Michael Downes.[https://www.ams.org/notices/200211/comm-downes.pdf "TEX and LATEX 2e"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210524182136/http://www.ams.org/notices/200211/comm-downes.pdf |date=2021-05-24 }}</ref>

There is a considerable blurring of the lines between the types of markup. In modern word-processing systems, presentational markup is often saved in descriptive-markup-oriented systems such as [[XML]], and then processed procedurally by [[Implementation|implementations]]. The programming in procedural-markup systems, such as [[TeX]], may be used to create higher-level markup systems that are more descriptive in nature, such as [[LaTeX]].

In recent years, several markup languages have been developed with ease of use as a key goal, and without input from standards organizations, aimed at allowing authors to create formatted text via [[Web browser|web browsers]], for example in [[wiki]]s and in [[Internet forum|web forums]]. These are sometimes called [[lightweight markup language]]s. [[Markdown]], [[BBCode]], and the [[Wikitext|markup language used by Wikipedia]] are examples of such languages.