http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format from 1987 ish worked this way. Or as another commenter mentioned

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format from 1987 ish worked this way. Or as another commenter mentioned SGML in it's more compact forms from the same time period and so therefore early HTMLs. Having a closing symbol at all is a pain and I have painful memories from trying to manually find a missing closing bracket in a book length Rtf document. HAML uses significant indention to accomplish the nesting which I find much much easier to read nowadays.