Michel Lavaud Orleans writes: > The structure of the document in its first stages is indicated > with punctuation marks, and typesetting indications such as > \smallskip, \hspace{2cm}, \bf or whatever extend the set of > punctuation marks available, and provide a convenient visual way > to refine the structure. This mimicks exactly what one does when > writing an article by hand. um, speak for yourself. I have tried to train myself *not* to write articles simply as a mimic of how i used to write by hand. on the contrary, when i write by hand these days i put in `generic markup' i must admit i am puzzled to follow this discussion on the _LaTeX_ list. surely people here are by definition believers in uncluttered structured markup? i can appreciate the Knuth approach of writing as typesetting, but if i was going to do it, i wouldnt use LaTeX Sebastian