What is the difference between form and content and how do they relate to one another?

Content is what a text says. Form is the way in which what it says is arranged. Everything from a chapter to a paragraph to a punctuation mark is a way of arranging the content of a text, and thus a formal quality. Form and content can't be disconnected from one another because no two formal arrangements of a text would convey the same impression. What's more, form can actually determine content. For instance, when Andrew Marvell writes in his poem 'The Bermudas' "he hangs in shades the orange bright /Like golden lamps in the green night', the fact that he has to find a rhyme to complete the couplet requires him to write 'orange bright', rather than 'bright orange', because nothing rhymes with orange.