EtText is a simple plain-text lightweight markup language

Lightweight markup language

A lightweight markup language is a markup language with a simple syntax, designed to be easy for a human to enter with a simple text editor, and easy to read in its raw form....

 which allows conversion to and from HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

. Instead of editing HTML directly, it provides an easy-to-edit, easy-to-read and intuitive way to write HTML, based on the plain-text markup conventions we've been using for years.

Like most simple text markup formats (POD

Plain Old Documentation

Plain Old Documentation, abbreviated pod, is a lightweight markup language used to document the Perl programming language.-Design:pod is designed to be a simple, clean language with just enough syntax to be useful. It purposefully does not include mechanisms for fonts, images, colors or tables...

, setext

Setext

Setext is a lightweight markup language used to format plain text documents such as e-newsletters, Usenet postings, and e-mails. In contrast to some other markup languages , the text is easily readable without any parsing or special software....

, etc.), EtText markup handles the usual things: insertion of <p> tags, header recognition and markup. However it also adds a powerful link markup system, and tries to be XHTML

XHTML

XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....

-conformant in its generated code.