CriticMarkup was designed to make plain text copyediting markup easy to write and easy to read. What follows is a short overview of the CriticMarkup syntax.
If you’re looking for more detailed information on how CriticMarkup renders its syntax into pure HTML, see the spec page.
The Basic Syntax
There are five types of Critic marks:
Addition {++ ++}
Deletion {-- --}
Substitution {~~ ~> ~~}
Comment
Highlight {== ==}
We’ll go over each of these marks in turn.
Additions
You make a CriticMarkup addition by surrounding the new text with curly braces and double plus marks.
Lorem ipsum dolor{++ sit++} amet…
A space character and “sit” will be inserted at the position shown.
Deletions
Deletions use a similar syntax. The text to be deleted is surrounded with curly braces and double hyphens.
Lorem{-- ipsum--} dolor sit amet…
The word “ipsum” and a leading space character are marked for deletion in the above example.
Substitutions
Substitutions combine a deletion with an addition in one snippet, and are written as matched curly braces and double tildes. A squiggly arrow made up of a tilde and greater-than symbol separates the old and new text. The characters to be deleted always occur to the left of the squiggly arrow.
Lorem {hipsum~>ipsum} dolor sit amet…
Despite the unique syntax, substitutions are really just a shorter way of writing a deletion followed by an addition.
Critic Markup supports generic comments for metadata. A comment may include a note, time stamp, author initial or other annotation.
Comments are added via a set of curly braces and double greater-than/less-than symbols.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Highlights
Highlights may be added as required by an editor or author, and the text to be outlined is marked by matched curly braces and double equal signs. Since a highlight on its own is fairly meaningless, it's always followed by a comment related to the highlighted passage.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. {==Vestibulum at orci magna. Phasellus augue justo, sodales eu pulvinar ac, vulputate eget nulla.==} Mauris massa sem, tempor sed cursus et, semper tincidunt lacus.
Putting it all together
When used together the marks can handle fairly complex edits while still remaining readable in plain text.
Don't go around saying{-- to people that--} the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. {One~>Only one} thing is impossible for God: To find {++any++} sense in any copyright law on the planet. {==Truth is stranger than fiction==}, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
Attribution
CriticMarkup doesn't offer a separate tag for assigning attribution to individual edits at this time. Correct attribution is difficult in a multi-editor context, and we want to make sure we do it right.
If attribution is useful in your editing workflow, we suggest using the comment tag and prepending an authors name with an @ symbol. For example:
Don't act so surprised, Your {Queen~>Highness}. You weren't on any mercy mission this time.
This will be the most compatible with future changes in CriticMarkup, since comments are unlikely to change in the future even if new tags are added.
User's Guide
CriticMarkup was designed to make plain text copyediting markup easy to write and easy to read. What follows is a short overview of the CriticMarkup syntax.
If you’re looking for more detailed information on how CriticMarkup renders its syntax into pure HTML, see the spec page.
The Basic Syntax
There are five types of Critic marks:
{++ ++}{-- --}{~~ ~> ~~}{== ==}We’ll go over each of these marks in turn.
Additions
You make a CriticMarkup addition by surrounding the new text with curly braces and double plus marks.
Lorem ipsum dolor{++ sit++} amet…
A space character and “sit” will be inserted at the position shown.
Deletions
Deletions use a similar syntax. The text to be deleted is surrounded with curly braces and double hyphens.
Lorem{-- ipsum--} dolor sit amet…
The word “ipsum” and a leading space character are marked for deletion in the above example.
Substitutions
Substitutions combine a deletion with an addition in one snippet, and are written as matched curly braces and double tildes. A squiggly arrow made up of a tilde and greater-than symbol separates the old and new text. The characters to be deleted always occur to the left of the squiggly arrow.
Lorem {
hipsum~>ipsum} dolor sit amet…Despite the unique syntax, substitutions are really just a shorter way of writing a deletion followed by an addition.
Critic Markup supports generic comments for metadata. A comment may include a note, time stamp, author initial or other annotation.
Comments are added via a set of curly braces and double greater-than/less-than symbols.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Highlights
Highlights may be added as required by an editor or author, and the text to be outlined is marked by matched curly braces and double equal signs. Since a highlight on its own is fairly meaningless, it's always followed by a comment related to the highlighted passage.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. {==Vestibulum at orci magna. Phasellus augue justo, sodales eu pulvinar ac, vulputate eget nulla.==} Mauris massa sem, tempor sed cursus et, semper tincidunt lacus.
Putting it all together
When used together the marks can handle fairly complex edits while still remaining readable in plain text.
Don't go around saying{-- to people that--} the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. {
One~>Only one} thing is impossible for God: To find {++any++} sense in any copyright law on the planet. {==Truth is stranger than fiction==}, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.Attribution
CriticMarkup doesn't offer a separate tag for assigning attribution to individual edits at this time. Correct attribution is difficult in a multi-editor context, and we want to make sure we do it right.
If attribution is useful in your editing workflow, we suggest using the comment tag and prepending an authors name with an
@symbol. For example:Don't act so surprised, Your {
Queen~>Highness}. You weren't on any mercy mission this time.This will be the most compatible with future changes in CriticMarkup, since comments are unlikely to change in the future even if new tags are added.