noun
1. Commerce.
the amount added by a seller to the cost of a commodity to cover expenses and profit in fixing the selling price.
the difference between the cost price and the selling price, computed as a percentage of either the selling price or the cost price.
an increase in price, as of a commodity.
the amount by which a price is increased.
2. the putting of a legislative bill into final form.
3. detailed instructions, usually written on a manuscript to be typeset, concerning style of type, makeup of pages, and the like.
4. Digital Technology. detailed instructions indicating the format, style, or structure for an electronic document or Web page.
See also markup language.
Andy did not originate this modern re-use of the term âmarkupâ, I donât blame him - it was the originators being âdeliberately obfuscatingâ in their annexation of the word. The use of the term âmarkupâ in commerce dates back to the late 19th century and therefore I would say has priority over the use in Word, I think if you asked a random selection of people you would probably find many more of them know the marketing meaning than the meaning in Word.
It seems to be a character of jargonising to take an everyday word and give it a shiny new meaning, known only by insiders until it starts to emerge into the general consciousness. I think the outstanding example is the word âgayâ, which until the sexual meaning emerged in the 60âs and 70âs meant âjoyfulâ, âcarefreeâ, or âbright and showyâ, if you used it in that sense now nobody would understand what you meant so the annexation has left a hole in the English language.
Indeed⌠I thought Martyn asked a very good question and the answer made perfect sense both in terms of intent, process and explanation. Version control and dissemination of accurate, up to date information will be much simpler for AMâs and the MT.
As the quoted dictionary definition showed, markup is a term used to describe the annotation of manuscripts with instructions for printing and layout. The term Blue Pencil to imply editing or composure changes dates from when sub-editors and copy editors marked up (thereâs that term again) changes to documents with a blue pencil for the specific reason that the colour did not show up on lithographic processes. The term blue pencil markup dates back to 1890. You can argue about it but a term that has been in use for 125 years is hardly a new use of the word.
The use of markup extends beyond editing and layout directives in printing. The term is heavily used with engineering and manufacturing drawings. Often a red pencil is used as that, like blue, can be transparent on many photo-lithographic processes.
Hereâs a grab from someone selling software to improve the manual markup process. (count how many times the term markup occurs).
As markup was a term already used in the composure of printed documents, itâs not surprising that the same term is used for digital printing (either to paper or to a display). You are reading a document rendered via the medium of HTML, hypertext markup language.
Can honestly say I have never came across that, learn something new everyday along with everything else under the sun needed for the end of this month !
In PCB design a DRC - Dyanmic Rule Checker is a similar idea. I can see how it could be miss understood though if it was used instead.
Given that Andy was talking about retrieval of electronic documents, Iâd have thought the context was pretty clear.
You obviously need to get more deeply involved with the maintenance and updating of ARMs Brian. If you had been, I can assure you that you would be well-acquainted with current common usage of âmarkupâ by now
Not so sure of that, Tom - I donât use Word, but the term doesnât appear on the word processors that I am familiar with, Word Perfect and Lotus Word Pro amongst others, and Iâm just learning Libre Office - and I donât remember seeing it anywhere in my copy of Corel Desktop Publishing either, it is more likely a term professional users will use amongst themselves than will appear in the tool bars.
âMarkupâ was probably first really defined for computer documents in GML (Generalized Markup Language) from IBM in 1969. That became Standardized GML (SGML) in 1986. HTML (1993) started as a form of SGML. Then XML was a simplified SGML, standardized in 1996.
Incidentally, the MarkLogic database would be an awesome way to store this data then format it. It was designed for that, searching and manipulating documents. Pretty danged fast, too.
