RE: [xml-dev] Is "markup" a noun or a verb? Do you "markup data" or "w

["Steven J. DeRose" <sderose@acm.org>]

I don't use "markup" as a verb, only "mark up".

There are quite a few open verb+preposition "phrasal verbs" in 
English, but I'm failing to come up with ones where the preposition 
gets incorporated right onto the verb.

Nouns, however, can close up freely.

"look up the word" = "look the word up"
"this lookup took 5 seconds"
but not "lookup the word"

"look up the hill"
"look the hill up" (though with a different meaning)
but not "lookup the hill"

"mark up the article"
"mark the article up"
but not: "markup the article"

Scanning /usr/share/dict/words for /up$/  I find:

backup blowup breakup buildup catchup (shouldn't that be 'ketchup'?) 
checkup cleanup cockup cutup getup grownup holdup hookup knockup 
letup lockup markup pickup roundup setup showup smashup straightup 
sunup tiltup tipup turnup

None of those sound like decent verbs to me, though most seem fine as 
nouns. Most can be verbs *if* you put in the space.

I'm not going to check all the prepositions just now, but a quick 
look at words ending in "down" and "over" suggest they behave the 
same way.

So, if "markup" as a verb is ok, it breaks a pattern shown by an 
awful lot of other words.

Steve "reviving ancient linguistics neurons" DeRose


At 12:03 PM -0500 9/12/08, Len Bullard wrote:
>Originally, I think it was a verb but it predates our digital technologies.
>It was the practice of those preparing a manuscript for a typesetter, AFAIK.
>
>Now it is both.
>
>len
>
>
>From: Costello, Roger L. [mailto:costello@mitre.org]
>
>Hi Folks,
>
>Consider this data:
>
>     Nikon D40
>
>Here I did "something" to the data:
>
>     <camera>Nikon D40</camera>
>
>
>Which is preferred way of expressing what I did to the data:
>
>1. I marked up the data.
>
>2. I wrapped the data in a tag.
>
>3. I wrapped the data in tags.
>
>4. I wrapped the data in a start-tag/end-tag pair.
>
>5. I wrapped the data in markup.
>
>6. I embedded the data in markup.
>
>7. I enclosed the data in markup.
>
>Or some other way?
>
>
>I suspect that several of the above expressions are acceptable; which
>ones? 
>
>Are some of the above expressions just plain wrong, i.e. incorrect
>English grammar?
>
>
>/Roger
>
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-- 

Steve DeRose -- http://www.derose.net, email sderose@acm.org