specification of the valid sentences of a formal language using a formal grammar
NOTE 1 A formal language is computer-interpretable.
NOTE 2 Formal grammars are usually Chomsky context-free grammars.
NOTE 3 Variants of Backus-Naur Form (BNF) such as Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) and Wirth Syntax Notation (WSN) are often used to specify the syntax of computer programming languages and data languages.
EXAMPLE 1 An XML document type definition (DTD) is a formal syntax.
EXAMPLE 2 ISO 10303-21 contains a formal syntax in WSN for ISO 10303 physical files.
technique of replacing natural language terms in a message with identifiers that reference data dictionary entries