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Which sentence is correct?

  1. The expression 0/0 is undefined.
  2. The expression "0/0" is undefined.

What is the part of speech of "expression" and "0/0" in this sentence?

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  • irrefragable has been almost totally replaced by irrefutable over the past couple of centuries (few native speakers today will ever have used it themselves, and most probably wouldn't even know of the earlier word). So I suggest you avoid it.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 26, 2020 at 11:49
  • @FumbleFingers Okay, I edited the question. It was just an impulsive decision to use it. Please answer my question.
    – Niraj Raut
    Commented Aug 26, 2020 at 12:03
  • I would say they're both irrefutably undefined, absent any context.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Aug 26, 2020 at 12:11
  • If something is undefined, can it even be an expression (or anything at all)?
    – Hagen von Eitzen
    Commented Aug 26, 2020 at 12:18
  • I don't know the answer to your actual question. I'd say "Parts of Speech" is a bit of a blunt instrument anyway, but would you be prepared to call both terms "nouns"? What use is it to have syntactic labels at this level? (I mean the level at which it might make a difference whether some term is set off by quote marks or not.)
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 26, 2020 at 12:21

1 Answer 1

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The expression xyz is a string containing an announcement of a quote (in the widest sense of that word, something one wishes to display) and the actual quote.

Quotes are traditionally offset by quotation marks, as in direct speech:

  • She shouted "Can you manage to swim across?"

Here, I'd prefer italics to offset a non-word expression, but 0/0 looks weird rather than highlighted. 0/0 is distinct enough, though adding offset quotes thus: '0/0' is not too unkind on the eyes and follows some old convention obediently. I usually prefer a horizontal bar, which demands a mathematical font.

The rules of grammar and punctuation are somewhat different in the maths domain. I'd probably stick here with

  • Division by zero is not a feasible operation, so 1/0, 3·142/0 and 0/0 etc are undefined.
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