This invention provides structured document data and a contents processing method, which can assure high versatility and process each individual required information using an application corresponding to processing performance in each device, so as to solve the problems in the aforementioned conventional description method. Structured document data according to this invention has designation information that designates an item position of a list held in a first document element which holds item information associated with a reference destination of contents as a list, and a second document element that holds information required to present the contents at the reference destination described in the item information corresponding to the designation information.