“Prose” is the name for a kind of nota­tio­nal style. It’s a way of making lan­guage look res­pon­sible. You’ve got jus­ti­fied mar­gins, capi­tal let­ters to begin gra­phe­mic strings which, when they are conclu­ded by per­iods, are cal­led sen­tences, inden­ted sen­tences that mark off blocks of sen­tences that you call para­graphs. This nota­tio­nal appa­ra­tus is inten­ded to add pro­bi­ty to that wild­ly irres­pon­sible, occa­sio­nal­ly illu­mi­na­ting and usual­ly play­ful sys­tem cal­led lan­guage. Novels may be writ­ten in “prose;” but in the begin­ning no books were writ­ten in prose, they were prin­ted in prose, because “prose” conveys an illu­sion of a com­mon­sen­si­cal logi­cal order. It’s as appro­priate to the novel as ket­chup to a ham­bur­ger, which is to say, it’s not very good but the ham­bur­ger wouldn’t go far without it.