Why doesn't the XML specification use the word "metacharacters" for less-than, ampersand, greater-than, quote, apostrophe symbols?

Hi Folks,

The regular expression metacharacters are:

\  ^  $  .  [  ]  |  (  )  *  +  ?  {  }

They are called metacharacters because they have special meanings.

XML has five characters with special meanings:

<  >  &  "  '

I searched the XML specification for the word "metacharacter". There are zero occurrences.

Why doesn't the XML specification use the word "metacharacter"?

/Roger