# Introduction

The Laws.Africa platform uses a parser: a machine translator that turns the plaintext in the Edit window into rich XML (see the screenshots below).

This parser relies heavily on **indentation** to group content and thus capture the structure of a document.

Keywords introduce a group, and everything that falls into that group is indented below the keyword.

See the 'Marking up' subsections for details, and the [Keyword reference](https://docs.laws.africa/markup-guide/keyword-reference) for a summary.

![](https://672843079-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-LoitfV0OP-HrMLMazq_%2F-MIYslRoedBDmolTEsU0%2F-MIYtykNuQgHrPeW6clh%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=8d92404b-600a-49ac-92c0-7cc6c7e79a53)

![](https://672843079-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-LoitfV0OP-HrMLMazq_%2F-MIYslRoedBDmolTEsU0%2F-MIYtosoN6pU3F1CeMU-%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=9f3465ee-72c8-474b-a02a-52a94f149cb3)