A (Psuedo-)Universal Wiki Markup Language
Wiki Creole is a “common Wiki markup language to be used across different Wikis.” It allows you to stylize Wiki text by “marking up” that text with other, symbolic text.
For example — to stylize text with bold, italic, or small caps typefacing, surround that text in:
**like this**;//like this//; or%%like this%%.See the Raiazome-specific, Wiki Creole-powered "cheat sheet" of all Creole markup supported by this Wiki — for further examples, syntax, and semantics.
Markup languages are normative rules for interpreting such symbols.
These rules are, usually, special-purposed for some field of application or publication. HTML, the most common markup language, structures web pages. XML, the most common meta-markup language, structures markup languages, themselves.
There exists no universal markup language — no lingua franca for universal, common interlocution in markup language, nor guttural, universally intelligible machine Esperanto by which all other markup languages can be made intelligible. Each markup language fills its vacuum-like niche of necessity: into, of, and only for itself, and communicable only to itself.
There does, however, exist a universal Wiki markup language — a standard for marking up Wiki page text — by which Wiki users may share, read, and write page text across different Wikis without concern for which different Wiki markup languages those pages are written in. There are irresolute pecularities to any language, markup or not. Such a standard smooths this out.
This standard is called Wiki Creole. Unfortunately, as yet, as with the complex vagaries of all human standards, not all Wikis abide by this standard. At the time of this writing, in fact — most don’t.
But some do. This Wiki is one of those.
Markup is symbolic text for “marking up” page text.
These symbols are not, themselves, printed in the text. Rather, they instruct the Wiki that interprets them on how to print, publish, and aesthetically structure that text. They are metadata; they are annotations; they live within the margins of the page; they are not the content for the page.
End users do not see them. End browsers do not recieve them. They flit, like cloaked ephemera, between the content, textual bedsheets of Wiki page text.