This paper presents a method for developing limited-context grammar rules in order to mark up text automatically, by attaching specific text segments to a small number of well-defined and application-determined semantic categories. The Text Analysis Tool with Object Encoding (TATOE) was used in order to support the iterative process of developing a set of rules as well as for constructing and managing the lexical resources. The work reported here is part of a real-world application scenario: the automatic semantic mark up of German news messages, as provided by a German press agency, according to the SGML-based standard News Industry Text Format (NITF) to facilitate their further exchange. The implemented export mechanism of the semantic mark up into NITF is also described in the paper.