Boston Has Six Letters: The Use/Mention Distinction

To say “Boston has six letters,” is nonsensical.  The city of Boston, a vast urban area, would have had to had undergone a nuclear apocalypse to have had all but six of the letters (in or out of their envelopes), and all the Emails that are metaphorically referred to as “letters” disappear.  Boston has millions of letters, with more coming each day.

To say that Boston has six letters, or, alternatively, that “Boston” has six letters is, however, accurate.  The word “Boston” is comprised of six alphabetical letters (one repeated).

The difference between saying that Boston has six letters and “Boston” has six letters is that in the first instance, we are using the word “Boston” to refer to the city.  In the second, we are mentioning the word as word.  The italics indicate that we are using the word as word.  The quotation marks are like two search lights trained on the word, interrogating it as word. 

The distinction between the two ways is called (and here I am mentioning the expression) the “use/mention distinction.”

Texting and Twitter are the main villains in eroding the use/mention distinction. Texting is notoriously annoying to punctuate, as you have to tab in and out of screens to access the marks; and Tweeting is limited to characters, so punctuating wastes space. If there is an italicizing function, it, too, becomes cumbersome.

When writing about language, as for example in literary interpretation, not honoring the use/mention distinction is distracting and annoying to the reader.  Note what happens in this excerpt from a student paper.  The writer quotes this line from Shakespeare’s “The Rape of Lucrece.”  As it is an indented quote, the white space around is functions as quotation marks:

            If in this blemish’d fort I make some hole

Then the writer proceeds to write this:

            Now, let’s look at the word blemished.

Literally, this means let’s look at how a word is blemished—tarnished, damaged, pocked—especially because it was not repeated exactly as the text had it. Yes, because of the context, I knew the writer was mentioning the word, but there was that microscopic hesitation and adjustment—my having to do the writer’s works for her—that made the reading difficult.  Hence, my estimation of and trust in the writer diminished.

            If the writer had been aware of this use/mention distinction, this is how she would have written:

            Now, let’s look at the word “blemish’d”

Since the use/mention distinction is only honored by those who are more awake to language, I would have been delighted by this punctuation, and read on without having to mark each iteration of the error.

           Crossword puzzles tease players by collapsing the use/mention distinction.  Here are some examples that depend on the readers ability to recast a word as used as a word mentioned.  Clues first, followed by the answer:

            Ready-go link:   Set

            Madscramble: where the word “Mad” was not indicated as a mention.  Notice how the letters of it are scrambled in these answers to the clue: Mixandmatch, Promdate, Clamdip, Badmove, Hadameal

            Cats poet:  Eliot

            Are in the past: Were

            Honoring the Use/Mention distinction is akin to punctuating direct quotes.  Do review the blog post Chew Upon This for how to punctuate them.

When writing a letter, whether digitally or on paper—when writing essays, poems, plays, stories—let’s build our readers’ trust and take pride in our attention to detail.  

In the Twitter image above,

SHOULD I USE

@REPLY OR

@MENTION?

the second and third lines should either be indented, to indicate an indented quote; italicized; or flanked by quotation marks.

Just mentioning…

© Susanna Rich, 2020

Works Cited:

Because I Can Teach:

Chew Upon This

https://becauseicanteach.blogspot.com/2018/11/chew-upon-this-digesting-your-quotes.html