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From: karl@dartvax.UUCP (Karl Berry)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Are any words more equal than others?
Message-ID: <1057@dartvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Mar-84 11:56:02 EST
Article-I.D.: dartvax.1057
Posted: Fri Mar 30 11:56:02 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Mar-84 09:43:16 EST
Organization: Dartmouth College
Lines: 18


  On odd occasions, I have wondered if such a thing as a ``true''
synonym actually exists. That is, a word that can be replaced by
another words with no appreciable change in the reader. ( I'm not
sure if that's a reasonable definition, since it depends on some
rather vage terms, like ``appreciable'' and ``reader.'' But I hope
the idea is fairly clear. )
   Recently I came to the conclusion that the answer was ``No.'' What
brought me to that was the project I'm working on now, TeX. ( A
typesetting program written by Don Knuth. I think TeX is a trademark
of the American Mathematical Society. ) The program naturally deals
with characters in quite a detailed way -- down to the printer's
point, which is small indeed. Thus, it seemed to me, that no word is
a synonym of another, because of typographical qualities; no two
words look the same.
   Does this seem correct?

{cornell,decvax}!dartvax!karl    --        karl@dartmouth