Nope. Used it, but didn't refer to it.
Oh, of course! (I was puzzled, too).
You did, of course, and I am
now by using 'it'. And in what I just typed I used 'it' and then
referred to it.
Note the infelicity of English in that referential pronouns can be
ambiguous. That's because we have so few; math, logic, programming
languages, et al, clean that up by having as many variables
(=pronouns) as one needs.
The analogy of variables to pronouns is very good. Is that standard, or did
you come up with it?
So:
Nope. Used it1, but didn't refer to it1. You did, of course, and I am
now by using 'it1'. And in what I just typed I used 'it1' and then
referred to it2.
Or to put this more straightforwardly,
'David' contains 5 letters and no quote marks, whereas ' 'David' '
contains 5 letters and 1 pair of quote marks.
Exactly.
Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx