The Guhl Forge

No. 07 · Study

A word, or the thing it names

“Mercury” can stay a word. It can also be made to point at a planet, an element or a god, without the sentence it sits in being rewritten.

Not every noun needs to become an object. Most words in most notes are just words, and that is a perfectly good thing for them to be. Turning every mention into a linked entity is how knowledge tools become chores.

Sometimes, though, a person means something more definite: not the word “Mercury”, but the planet, low in the west after sunset. The idea explored here is that this can be said deliberately, at the moment it matters, without changing what was written. The sentence stays as it is. The reference sits alongside it.

Three notes, as written

  1. 1

    Mercury was low in the west after sunset, easy to miss.

  2. 2

    The barometer in the hall still has its mercury .

  3. 3

    A bronze Mercury , winged sandals and all, on the fountain in the square.

Choose what each “Mercury” is. Try making two of them point at the same thing.

Things referred to

  • None yet. Every “Mercury” is just a word, which is a perfectly good thing to be.
Illustration · made for this site

Three invented sentences that share one word. Choose what each occurrence is, and watch the things on the right gather the references that point at them. The sentences are never edited.

Equal words are not equal things

The same word in three sentences can name three different things, and three different words can name the same one. A system that matched on spelling would get both wrong. A deliberate reference avoids the guess: it says what was meant, by the person who meant it.

It also gives a thing a way to become important without being declared so. Once several notes point at the planet, the planet has a small history of its own, made entirely of what was written about it.

Where it stands

Exists

  • A browser-only prototype, reached from the Slate, that lays out literal words and deliberate references side by side.
  • A distinction between referring to an idea, to one occasion of it, and to a file that was received.

Not yet, or not decided

  • A connection to the rest of the application. The prototype shares no identities with anything else.
  • Answers to the harder questions it raises, such as when a word should be turned into a reference, and how a reference keeps its identity over time.