A million consecutive ands

Posted by Bob on May 05, 2007

In Reply to: Well... posted by Bob on May 03, 2007

: : In reply to Vic Harding's message of 20 January (doubtless answered by others already), there is a five-version answer which has somebody commenting on the lettering that has been inexpertly done for a pub called the Coach and Horses. The person commenting says 'The spaces between 'coach' and 'and' and 'and' and horses are not the same'. But I've not come across one with six.

: I just looked at your example sentence, and the way my browser displayed them. Deplorable word spacing on my screen, a typographic jumble. The spaces between 'and' and "and 'and'" and "and 'and'" and 'and' are totally different.

: That's nine, and if you wanted to comment on that sentence, you could keep piling on, forever. Bertrand Russell called language about language "meta-lenguage" if I recall correctly. there;s a big differnece between apples and "apples," the word that represents the more edible thing.

Put another way, you might say "and and and" and "and and and" are identical 3-word phrases.