“In the beginning was the word” (John 1:1)—but what is a word?Surprisingly, the invention of the alphabet only made matters more confusing.A “word” is a thing, a concept, that seems clear from afar, but gets fuzzier the harder we look at it. Within English, is “birthday” one word or two? What about “wedding day”? If you thought it was obvious that “birthday” is one word but “wedding day” two, it is because of the way they are written.
Similarly, what gives us the idea that a written sentence is made up of individual words? ...
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