The formalism was invented by Adriaan van Wijngaarden to define rigorously some syntactic restrictions which previously had to be formulated in natural language, despite their essentially syntactical content.
Izumio ju je Adriaan van Wijngaarden kako bi rigorozno definirao neka sintaksna ograničenja koja su prethodno morala biti formulirana u prirodnom jeziku, usprkos svojem esencijalno sintaktičkom sadržaju.