What Is Text?

Weblog posting on TEXT

Given the debate over the academic validity of using sites that are created by a ‘community of experts’, I decided to go to the source that most of us equate with this movement, namely Wikipedia. There it was confirmed that ‘text’ has multiple meanings:

• Plain text refers to computer code
• A text is a coherent set of symbols
• A textbook is an instructional manual
• And a text can refer to a particular Biblical passage
• TEXT is the name of a hardcore band from Sweden

To me text simple means a way to getting a message across and that is why I chose the Rosetta Stone as a pictorial representation of text. Without text we would rely on other means of communication (oral, gesturing, smoke signals etc.). Most if not all of these would be far less efficient than using text in one form or the other. I mean how else would I be able to describe to what text means to me without actually using text?