<seg type="preamble"> <seg>Sigmund, <seg type="patronym">the son of Volsung</seg>, was a king in Frankish country.</seg> <seg>Sinfiotli was the eldest of his sons ...</seg> <seg>Borghild, Sigmund's wife, had a brother ... </seg> </seg>
The seg element may be used at the encoder's discretion to mark any segments of the text of interest for processing. One use of the element is to mark text features for which no appropriate markup is otherwise defined. Another use is to provide an identifier for some segment which is to be pointed at by some other element—i.e. to provide a target, or a part of a target, for a ptr or other similar element.