Why do you say that? Syntax is notation. Check out this paper by the guy who invented APL, when they gave him his Turing award: http://awards.acm.org/images/awards/140/articles/9147499.pdf
Donald Knuth thinks that programs should be more like prose (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming) -- not that I've ever tried, or fully understand, literate programming.
-----