Secondary notation

Examples of secondary notation include the syntax highlighting of computer source code, sizes and color codes for easy recognition of consumer symbols such as bank notes or coins, or the regular typographic conventions often found in technical books to highlight sections with the same type of content.

Secondary notation is common in typography and in code editors appearing as boldness, italics, and spacing/indentation.

A graphical representation that has been well studied and can be heavily impacted by secondary notation is a flowchart and especially drakon-charts.

However, the one that uses better secondary notation can be readily understood whereas the other model requires careful analysis to understand its contents.

The ability of individuals to understand and use secondary notation has been shown[citation needed] to vary based on experience within the relevant field.

Such formal notations attempt to improve readability by enforcing the presence of visual cues.

For example, the Python programming language requires source code to follow strict indentation rules.

This is intended to improve readability of the code, by ensuring that statements that are at the same level of nesting within a block are aligned to the same column.