Tag soup
A supposed failing of the implementation of HTML, in which markup tags can be used in a manner differently than the way they were intended.
One example is the way many HTML authors use <blockquote> </blockquote> to indent text, because some Web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator indent blockquote'd text. This is wrong because the real purpose of blockquote tags is simply to mark text consisting of several quoted sentences, not to indent it.
In a message on the xml-dev mailing list, G. Ken Holman explains:
I have used this term in my instruction for years to characterize the jumble of angle brackets acting like tags in HTML in pages that are accepted by browsers. Improper minimization, overlapping constructs ... stuff that looks like SGML markup but the creator didn't know or respect SGML rules for the HTML vocabulary. In effect a soupy collection of text and markup.
Additional resources
What is Tag Soup?
Dave Winer of UserLand Software discusses the issue in more detail.
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