Understanding HTML and SGML

HTML is an application conforming to International Standard ISO 8879 -- Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). SGML is a system for defining structured document types, and markup languages to represent instances of those document types. The SGML declaration for HTML is given in SGML Declaration for HTML. It is implicit among WWW implementations.

In the event of any apparent conflict between HTML and SGML standards, the SGML standard is definitive.

Every SGML document has three parts:

HTML refers to the document type as well as the markup language for representing instances of that document type.


Preceding Section: Understanding HTML and MIME
Following Section: Working with Structured Text
Parent Section: HTML Specification
Contents of HyperText Markup Language