The fundamental structure of an SVG drawing is defined by the elements and attributes that draw content to the screen. These aspects of SVG markup create the shapes and text you see, and control their basic layout. The shapes and layout are defined in a vector language of x and y coordinates that plots out positions on an invisible grid.

The next few chapters describe the SVG elements that create new visible content: basic shapes, custom shapes, and text. Part III examines more closely how those x and y coordinates are measured and manipulated.