text
Much written communication is in prose that has
little outward structure. An essay may have an introductory
topic, sets of explanations, and a concluding paragraph.
A book may be divided into chapters, sometimes with
sub-sections. We text all the time in news and
recreational reading which is fairly unstructured. Most
political news is given to us in this format.
When we do any type of project involving a team of
people we need more than just unstructured text.
We need to be able to identify what tasks and
problems exist, for example. Often with simple text we
cannot even determine the number of tasks and
problems described, for example.
Institutions which deal with large amounts of
information, such as hospitals and libraries, carefully
structure their information. (Actually hospital information
is often rather difficult to use, but it does have structures
and standards.) Businesses must manager large
amounts of information, and often have may programmers
and database experts to assist. In activism, however, simple
text is used almost exclusively.
Simple text may be important for describing a first-person
experience. A speculative essay perhaps should not have
much structure. When information needs action, structure
is usually required. ("Form follows function.")
