With written texts, some of the problems associated with spoken transcripts are absent: we do not have to contend with people all speaking at once, the writer has usually had time to think about what to say and how to say it, and the sentences are usually formed in a way that the utterances of natural, spontaneous talk are not. But the overall questions remain the same: what norms or rules do people adhere to when creating written texts? Are texts structured according to recurring principles, is there a hierarchy of units comparable to acts, moves and exchanges, and are there conversational ways of opening and closing texts?