Texts

In linguistics, a text is a coherent sequence of language that forms a communicative whole, extending beyond a single sentence. In everyday use, "text" also refers to written or printed material, including books, articles, emails, or web pages.

Texts vary by purpose and format: literary texts such as novels and poetry; informational or technical texts like manuals and reports; journalistic texts; religious or legal texts; digital texts created for the web or apps; many texts are multimodal, combining words with images, layout, and other media.

Texts have structure through macrostructure (overall organization) and microstructure (sentences, paragraphs, cohesion devices). Genre conventions, audience expectations, and context shape interpretation. Text analysis studies these aspects, including discourse markers, narrative voice, and coherence.

Writing systems emerged in ancient civilizations, manuscript culture evolved to printed books in the early modern period, and digital technology has transformed creation, storage, and dissemination. Encoding standards such as Unicode enable consistent representation of characters across platforms.

In computing, text is a sequence of characters processed by software; natural language processing, text mining, OCR, and search tools extract meaning from text. Texts enable communication, record knowledge, support education, and influence culture and information access.