NED 11 Glossary

SGML

Standard Generalized Markup Language–a standard for describing markup languages

DTD

Document Type Definition–this is the formal specification of a markup language, written using SGML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language–HTML is an SGML DTD

element

a fundamental component of the structure of a text document. Some examples of elements are heads, tables, paragraphs, and lists. Think of it this way: you use HTML tags to mark the elements of a file for your browser. Elements can contain plain text, other elements, or both.

escape sequences

display other characters not available in the plain ASCII character set (primarily characters with diacritical marks). Three ASCII characters–the left angle bracket (<), the right angle bracket (>), and the ampersand (&)–have special meanings in HTML and therefore cannot be used “as is” in text. (The angle brackets are used to indicate the beginning and end of HTML tags, and the ampersand is used to indicate the beginning of an escape sequence.) To use one of the three characters in an HTML document, you must enter its escape sequence instead: < the escape sequence for & lt; ; & gt; the escape sequence for > ; & amp; the escape sequence for &