> -- Again, if there was a better parser at hand, one would not need to have > any markup at all, because it would be able to see that `20' is the object give up, unless you want to wait for a parser which "understands" human language (or write one but don't hand wave it) how do you do without markup in this case: The $a$ in the formula is a variable while contrieved i came across that particular problem in math when i tried to understand an article in Hungarian (i think) about number theory and misstook an "a" being text as part of a longer inline formula because it was incorrectly coded (by you perhaps?) ie not identifiable easily as math not text. frank