Interpretation Beyond Markup

The meaning conveyed by documents and their markup often goes well beyond what can be inferred from the markup alone. It often depends on context, so that to interpret document markup adequately we must situate markup interpretation within a broader interpretive problem. Markup is just one of several sources of evidence brought to bear in processing digital documents; it must be integrated with other information to be exploited fully. An example drawn from an ongoing project on the metrical analysis of Russian poetry helps illustrate these points: the explicit markup of the rhyme scheme can be understood only on the basis of a broader understanding of Russian meter and poetics.