1. A computer-implemented method of extracting an acronym and one or more corresponding expansions of the acronym from a document represented in a markup language, the method comprising the steps of: examining the document to identify at least one acronym contained therein; retrieving a portion of the document for each identified acronym, wherein the portion is located within the document proximate the identified acronym; determining one or more expansions of each identified acronym based on the corresponding retrieved document portion; determining a ranking for each expansion based on attributes of the document; and selecting one or more expansions for an identified acronym using the determined rankings.