1. A set of quality standards that make programs more verbose but more readable, reliable, and easily maintained. The goal of structured programming is to avoid spaghetti code caused by overreliance on GOTO statements, a problem often found in BASIC and FORTRAN programs. Structured programming-such as that promoted by C, Pascal Modula-2, and the dBASE software command language - insists that the overall program structure reflect what the program is supposed to do, beginning with the first task and proceeding logically. Indentations help make the logic clear, and the programmer is encouraged to use loops and branch control structures and named procedures rather than GOTO statements. From QUECID