Editing Web Ontology Language (section)

===High level===
These are close to the ontology structure of languages in the OWL family.

====OWL abstract syntax====
High level syntax is used to specify the OWL ontology structure and semantics.<ref name="owl:spec:semantics_and_syntax">{{cite web |url=http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-semantics-20040210/syntax.html |title=OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics and Abstract Syntax |first1=Peter F. |last1=Patel-Schneider |first2=Ian |last2=Horrocks |first3=Hayes |last3=Patrick J. |author-link3=Patrick J. Hayes |date=2004-02-10 |publisher=World Wide Web Consortium |access-date=18 April 2010 }}</ref>

The OWL abstract syntax presents an ontology as a sequence of ''annotations'', ''axioms'' and ''facts''. Annotations carry machine and human oriented meta-data. Information about the classes, properties and individuals that compose the ontology is contained in axioms and facts only.
Each class, property and individual is either ''anonymous'' or identified by an [[URI|URI reference]]. Facts state data either about an individual or about a pair of individual identifiers (that the objects identified are distinct or the same). Axioms specify the characteristics of classes and properties. This style is similar to [[frame language]]s, and quite dissimilar to well known syntaxes for [[description logic|DLs]] and [[Resource Description Framework]] (RDF).<ref name="owl:spec:semantics_and_syntax" />

Sean Bechhofer, ''et al.'' argue that though this syntax is hard to parse, it is quite concrete. They conclude that the name ''abstract syntax'' may be somewhat misleading.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://owl.man.ac.uk/2003/concrete/20031210/ |title=OWL Web Ontology Language Concrete Abstract Syntax |first1=Sean |last1=Bechhofer |author-link1=Sean Bechhofer |first2=Peter F. |last2=Patel-Schneider |first3=Daniele |last3=Turi |author-link3=Daniele Turi |date=2003-12-10 |publisher=[[University of Manchester]] |access-date=18 April 2010 }}</ref>

====OWL2 functional syntax====
This syntax closely follows the structure of an OWL2 ontology. It is used by OWL2 to specify semantics, mappings to exchange syntaxes and profiles.<ref name="owl2:spec:structure">{{cite web |url=http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-owl2-syntax-20091027/ |title= OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Structural Specification and Functional-Style Syntax |last1=Motik |first1=Boris |author-link1=Boris Motik |last2=Patel-Schneider |first2=Peter F. |last3=Parsia |first3=Bijan |author-link3=Bijan Parsia |date=2009-10-27 |work=OWL 2 Web Ontology Language |publisher=World Wide Web Consortium |access-date=18 April 2010 }}</ref>