TITLE: More on Real-World Examples of Quotation
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 25, 2013  4:47 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
My rumination on
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2013-01.html#e2013-01-24T16_32_40.htm">
   real-world examples of quotation</A>
to use with my students learning Scheme sparked the imaginations
of several readers.  Not too surprisingly, they came up with
better examples than my own...  For example, musician and
software developer Chuck Hoffman suggested:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
A song, he sang.  <BR/>
"A song", he sang.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

The meaning of these is clearly different depending on whether
we treat <EM>a song</EM> as a variable or as a literal.

My favorite example came from long-time friend Joe Bergin:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
"Lincoln" has seven letters.  <BR/>
Lincoln has seven letters.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Very nice.  Joe beat me with my own example!

As Chuck wrote, song titles create an interesting challenge,
whether someone is singing a certain song or singing in a way
defined by the words that happen to also be the song's title.
I have certainly found it hard to find words both that are
part of a title or a reference and that flow seamlessly in a
sentence.

This turns out to be a fun form of word play, independent of
its use as a teaching example.  Feel free to send me your
favorites.
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