Content that entered informally has started to repeat itself: a label applied again and again, near-synonyms circling one meaning, prose that behaves like a list, a note field everyone fills the same way. The structure is visibly there — but it was never declared, because demanding a schema up front was rightly refused while the vocabulary was still moving.
Incremental formalisation promotes structure only after the content has earned it. The promotion starts from either side. The actor promotes a piece once it starts to matter: a commented passage that other documents now refer to becomes a quote with an identity of its own. Or the system recognises what recurs and offers to formalise — merge these two labels, turn this recurring mark into a field, treat this prose as a table — and the actor accepts, defers, or ignores. Structure stays optional and reversible: gained in place when it starts paying, shed in place when it stops.
Examples
- A search refined by hand, offered back as a saved filter or smart folder
- Two near-synonym labels offered a merge; a recurring label offered as a field
- Prose recognised as a list or table and offered the conversion, reversibly — the block-editor instance
- A spreadsheet range recognised as a table and offered headers and types
- A commented passage turned into a quote: the words stay where they are, the thread moves with them, and other documents can refer to the quote — the commenting instance, started by the actor rather than offered
Research on this pattern
- Demanded formality fails in four ways: cognitive overhead, tacit knowledge that resists being written down, structure imposed before the task is understood, and structure that differs from one situation to the next. Actors either refuse the schema or fill it with guesses. The same paper names incremental and system-assisted formalisation as the remedy.
- The move was named and built as incremental formalisation, with information entered informally and formalised later as its structure became clear.
- What remains untested: the sources are reports from building and deploying systems, not controlled comparisons. How often a system can offer to formalise before the offers become interruptions has not been measured.
Consequences
- structure arrives after evidence rather than before it, so the schema records what the content turned out to be instead of what someone predicted it would be
- every promotion is chosen or offered, never imposed, and stays reversible — a declined offer costs nothing, and a promoted structure can be demoted when it stops fitting
- the system's offers need a budget: a system that proposes structure at every regularity it spots re-creates the interruption it was meant to avoid
Resources & references
- Shipman & Marshall (1999) Formality considered harmful — the four failure modes of demanded structure, and incremental and system-assisted formalisation as the remedy
- Shipman & McCall (1994) Supporting knowledge-base evolution with incremental formalization — the move named and built
- Ink & Switch — Formality on demand
Appears in
Making sense at scale
- Marking items while reading, step 2 — Offer structure once the marks show it
Related patterns
Enacts
- Formality — the move enacting the quality: structure gained or shed in place, matched to how mature the actor's understanding has become
Complements
- Tag — the grown label vocabulary is the usual promotion candidate — near-synonyms merged, a recurring label blessed into a field
Related to
- Suggestion — the offer to formalise usually arrives wearing suggestion's contract — proposed, inspectable, declinable
Preceded by
- Commenting — some commented passages start being referred to, not only discussed, and a highlight with a thread is too weak an object for that; the passage needs an identity of its own, without leaving its place in the text or losing its thread