The current disclosure provides techniques for visualizing text expressions in spreadsheet cells in a more intuitive and user friendly manner by mapping syntactic elements of the text expressions to two-dimensional (2D) configurations of 2D elements, and displaying the 2D configurations in a graphical user interface, wherein the syntactic relationships between syntactic elements in the text expressions are rendered as spatial relationships between the 2D elements in the 2D configuration. In one embodiment, a method for converting a text expression into a 2D configuration comprises selecting a spreadsheet cell based on input received from a user input device, wherein the spreadsheet cell comprises a text expression, parsing the text expression, using a logic subsystem, into at least a first syntactic element, mapping the first syntactic element, using the logic subsystem, to a first two-dimensional (2D) element, and displaying the first 2D element in a graphical user interface via a display subsystem.