indicates that the constructs referenced by its children occur in any order (i.e. are interleaved) The <interleave> element must have at least two child elements.

This example describes a content model that consists of a mandatory persName element, zero or one of either placeName or location, and an optional note element, in any order.

To express this content model in a DTD, the original schema language for XML, one might use ( persName | ( persName, note ) | ( persName, ( placeName | location ) ) | ( note, persName ) | ( ( placeName | location ), persName ) | ( persName, note, ( placeName | location ) ) | ( persName, ( placeName | location ), note ) | ( note, persName, ( placeName | location ) ) | ( note, ( placeName | location ), persName ) | ( ( placeName | location ), note, persName ) | ( ( placeName | location ), persName, note ) )

If an ODD file makes use of this element, current processing software will not be able to generate a DTD from it. For this reason TEI P5 itself does not currently make use of interleave internally.