  The hierarchical quark masses and small mixing angles are shown to lead to a
simple triangular form for the U- and D-type quark mass matrices. In the basis
where one of the matrices is diagonal, each matrix element of the other is, to
a good approximation, the product of a quark mass and a CKM matrix element. The
physical content of a general mass matrix can be easily deciphered in its
triangular form. This parameterization could serve as a useful starting point
for model building. Examples of mass textures are analyzed using this method.
