Balisage Paper: Presentational Markup: What's going on?

We explore some theoretical questions concerning the renditional features common in textual communication. By renditional features we mean such things as the arrangement of text on the page and text size or style, whether in manuscript or printed documents. We refer to these features as presentational markup, using that phrase with its original meaning: the renditional features themselves, not the codes intended to generate these features when processed by computer software. Presentational markup plays a critical role in textual communication as these renditional features directly support the recognition of content in the final phase of communication. Yet it is descriptive markup that has dominated the attention of the SGML/XML markup theorists. We take a few steps towards rebalancing this distribution of attention. We consider whether presentational markup should be considered a category of document markup alongside descriptive and procedural markup, summarize the origin of variant meanings of “presentational markup, ” and describe several approaches to understanding the role of presentational markup in the communication of information. Although we focus on textual communication, much of the discussion about renditional features applies to oral communication as well; renditional features exist in speech as well as in writing. These are the preliminary ruminations of a Balisage “Late Breaking” contribution - we are inviting discussion.