  This paper attempts a more formal approach to the legibility of text based
programming languages, presenting, with proof, minimum possible ways of
representing structure in text interleaved with information. This presumes that
a minimalist approach is best for purposes of human readability, data storage
and transmission, and machine evaluation.
  Several proposals are given for improving the expression of interleaved
hierarchical structure. For instance, a single colon can replace a pair of
brackets, and bracket types do not need to be repeated in both opening and
closing symbols or words. Historic and customary uses of punctuation symbols
guided the chosen form and nature of the improvements.
