Text Encoding Using XML

XML, Extensible Markup Language, is a recommendation, endorsed by the World Wide Web Consortium, which defines a simple yet flexible generic syntax for document markup. XML, like its predecessor SGML, Standard Generalised Markup Language, developed by IBM in the 1970s and 1980s, allows for the definition of system-independent methods of representing texts of any kind in electronic form. The term 'Markup', originally used for the (Hand-Written) instructions added to a manuscript or typescript to indicate to the compositor how the printed text was to look in terms of spacing, font size, use of italics and so on, has been carried over into electronic document processing to describe the codes used to indicate these same features and other aspects of processing.