Usage Note

To avoid confusion, I here explain my varying uses of double and single quotes throughout the book. I apply double quotes according to standard usage to indicate both direct quotes and terms/phrases used by someone but not necessarily indicating a direct quote. I use single quotes in the standard way to indicate a quotation within a quotation. I also use single quotes to mark off terms and phrases which seem in varying degrees misleading (see Drive Yourself Sane for further explanation). The single quotes here serve as a safety device to alert the reader to take care when using such terms. For example, using terms such as ‘mind’, ‘body’, etc., may mislead one into assuming that what corresponds to each term exists in the non-verbal world as an isolated, separate entity. I also use single quotes to mark off terms used metaphorically or playfully.

My use of such language as “some,” “to me,” “as I see it,” “seem(s),” “to some degree,” etc., may seem too indefinite or “wishy-washy” for some readers. I do not apologize. Rather, this represents my conscious effort to use an approach to language called EMA, English Minus Absolutism, which was formulated by General-Semantics writer Allen Walker Read. As Read has said, “ It is clear to many of us that we live in a process world, in which our judgements can only be probabilistic. Therefore we would do well to avoid finalistic, absolutistic terms. Can we ever find ‘perfection’ or ‘certainty’ or ‘truth’? No! Then let us stop using such words in our formulations.”1

Note
1. Qtd. in Kodish and Kodish, pp. 180-181

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