A flexible text format for creating structured computer documents in machine-readable form
simplest version of the SGML standard for creating and designing HTML documents (suitable for use on Internet sites)
extensible markup language a way of writing a document on a computer so that its structure is clear, and so that it can easily be read on a different computer system. in full Extensible Markup Language. Markup language developed to be a simplified and more structural version of SGML. It incorporates features of HTML (e.g., hypertext linking), but is designed to overcome some of HTML's limitations. For example, it is designed to be extensible (i.e., designed to allow the creation of customized markup tags), which HTML is not. It is also designed to represent data by meaning rather than by layout (as it is represented in HTML). Like SGML, it is a metalanguage (a language for dealing with languages); it allows users to create a language tailored specifically to their needs