In HORSE, a content object which is likely to overlap another XML element is used normally whenever it doesn’t cause an overlap problem, and is encoded using the same element type, but with an improved version of the typed segment-boundary delimiter method whenever it does. Thus:

<l>I found at a conference C M Sperberg-McQueen</l>
<l>Sang <q>closing, keynoting, I'm speaking</q></l>
<l>And I said to him, <q sID="q2"/>Superman, have you not seen,</l>
<l>The embarrassment havoc I'm wreaking?<q eID="q2"/></l>

Here the existence of the sID= attribute indicates that the 2nd occurrence of the <q> element is actually a segment-boundary delimiter, the start of what would be a normal <q> element if it could.