In Landscape Architecture as Storytelling there are chapters devoted to exploring point, line, plane(s), and volumetric spaces as they appear and are applied in Language, Basic Design, and Landscape Design. For now, here is a simple overview. A single point or dot on a blank canvas is like that first word in an essay. The character of a point (star shaped, oblong, translucent, outline, Gothic) provides a first impression that initiates a developmental progression of statements and messages leading to an overall narrative. As points move through space they inscribe lines; as words collect across a page or computer screen they provide that linear feature called a sentence; as points move across a landscape they introduce edges, paths, walkways.
As words collect to make sentences, they do so according to grammar and syntax. Such rules in basic design are two- and three-dimensional design principles (Kandinsky, 1979; Wong, 1972); and in landscape, and in architecture, and in interior design we respond to principles of aesthetics, sociology, environmental psychology, and physics and chemistry.