SGML

standard generalized mark-up language: an international standard used in publishing for defining the structure and formatting of documents

Short for Standard Generalized Markup Language. A standardized markup language for describing the structure and formatting of a computer document. Sections of the document are set off by embedded tags. The tags and the relationships among the groups they represent are described in a DTD (Document Type Definition). The tags do not directly specify what the display of the document will look like, so different applications can display the information differently.