Do XML, HTML, and JSON represent types of structured data?

• A. The statement is True
• B. The statement is False
• C. Not sure
• D. It depends

Answer: (B)

Structured data means data organized in a well-defined format that enables machine processing and easy extraction of meaning. XML and JSON are built precisely for this: they encode data with a clear hierarchy and can be validated against schemas, making them reliable structured data formats for data interchange and storage. HTML, however, is a markup language designed to describe how content should be presented in a browser. Its primary purpose is rendering, not capturing data semantics in a portable, schema-backed way. While HTML documents have a structure, that structure isn’t meant for representing data in a formal, machine-ready way like XML or JSON. Some annotations for semantics can be added to HTML (for example, JSON-LD or microdata), but that’s using separate standards within HTML, not HTML itself being a structured data format. So the statement isn’t correct because HTML doesn’t fit the same role as XML and JSON as a structured data format.