Markup

How to spell markup

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce markup

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does markup mean?

1. nounThe amount added to the cost price of goods to set the selling price and cover profit.
2. nounTags or codes inserted into text to describe its structure or how it should be displayed.
3. nounCorrections, notes, and instructions written or annotated onto a document or proof.

Markup in a sentence

• The shop applies a fifty percent markup on imported wine.

• The page broke because a closing tag in the markup was missing.

• The editor returned the draft covered in red markup and queries.

• A steep markup on spare parts pushed the repair bill higher.

• She cleaned up the messy markup before publishing the article online.

• The author accepted every change in the markup before sending the final copy.

Where does markup come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound formed in English from the everyday verb 'mark', which descends from the Old English 'mearc' meaning a boundary, sign, or visible trace, and the particle 'up', from Old English 'upp'. The phrasal verb 'to mark up' meant to raise a price by writing a higher figure, and by the late nineteenth century the closed-up noun 'markup' had settled into commercial English to name the amount added to a cost. In the twentieth century printers and editors used 'markup' for the symbols and instructions written onto a manuscript to guide typesetting. From that publishing sense, computing borrowed the term in the 1960s for tags that describe how text should be displayed, giving us names like HyperText Markup Language. Because both halves are plain native words, the only real spelling decision is whether to close it up, and the modern noun is always written solid as one word.

How the word is built

• mark (a written sign or visible cost)
• up (adverb particle indicating addition or increase)