A language that annotates or structures document text using explicit tags, elements or declarative syntax, rather than expressing executable step-by-step computation; not Turing-complete in the general-purpose-programming sense. Added per TaxonomyDecisionId 31 (2026-09-01, owner decision), which folds markup languages into this atlas's existing language EntityType rather than splitting them into a new type, distinguished here by SubLabel the same way every other language member already is. Belongs here: HTML, XML, Markdown and SGML, the metalanguage both HTML and XML derive their own design principles from. Does not belong here: a Turing-complete general-purpose or scripting programming language, filed under one of the atlas's existing paradigm-classification subcategories, or a language whose primary purpose is representing structured data for machine interchange rather than marking up document text, filed under Data Serialization Format.
Facts
Comparison
Era of Emergence Browse By
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Markup language
WikipediaMarkup language, Scribe GML SGML sectionQuote, Markup language, Scribe GML SGML section
Goldfarb developed the basic idea while working on a primitive document management system intended for law firms in 1969, and helped invent IBM's Generalized Markup Language (GML) later that same year.
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