From the discussion of WYSIWYG interfaces: > "For example, a word may be printed in italic font for emphasis, as part of a book title, or as part of a quotatio

From the discussion of WYSIWYG interfaces: > "For example, a word may be printed in italic font for emphasis, as part of a book title, or as part of a quotation, but the specific meaning is lost if it is represented only by the fact that the characters are italicized.... [Markup languages can] preserve the semantic meaning inherent in the text and have rules for converting the text and semantics into their appearance on the printed page." A lot of technologies (like CSS and XML) have taken exactly this approach. Semantic meaning is stored with an object, and the particular appearance can be converted across an entire document with a single change. I see "readability" [0] linked from HN fairly often; it's a technology that leverages this quite well. [0] http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/