Defining Form in Relation to Social Norms

Form is whether or not a paragraph is indented. Form is whether or not the first letter of the first word of an article or chapter is capitalized and in much larger font than the rest. Form is whether or not paragraphs consist of three to five sentences and has a topic sentence as the first. Form is whether or not the text allows the writer to appear in the text, to write as a writer writing, versus a writer remaining outside the text. Form is whether or not lines of poetry rhyme and and have a consistent rhythm to them. Form is whether a sentence starts at the top-left corner of the page and reads left to right or whther it starts at the bottom-right and reads right to left.

I see this relating to social norms in the dimension of social consistency and comfort. Similarly to needing a dominant language in a multilingual society so that there is one language that can be used universally between everyone, it is also thought that we need to have prescriptive rules regarding the creation of texts, so that we know what the form is. We read a poem made with stanzas made of four lines that have a distinct rhyming pattern and we know, "this is a poem." Things start to get a little hazy when the poetic lines start to resemble clouds visually and the endings don't rhyme or have an implied rhythm. And then someone like Joe McCarthy presents himself, usually.