This text brings together a selection of the best papers from three international electronic design language conferences in 2000. The conferences are the Hardware Description Language Conference and Exhibition (HDLCon), held in the Silicon Valley area of USA; the Forum on Design Languages (FDL), held in Europe; and the Asia Pacific Chip Design Language (APChDL) Conference. The papers cover a range of topics, including design methods, specification and modelling languages, tool issues, formal verification, simulation and synthesis. The results presented in these papers should help researchers and practising engineers keep abreast of developments in this rapidly evolving field.