  Ideally, a theory of words and their tokens should tell us not only (i) what a word is (in the sense indicated), but (ii) how a word is to be individuated, (iii) whether there is anything all and only tokens of a particular word have in common (other than being tokens of that word); (iv) how we know about words; (v) what the relation is between words and their tokens; (vi) what makes a token a token of one word rather than another; (vii) how word tokens are to be individuated; and (viii) what makes us think a particular is a token of one word rather than another. These questions are distinct, although they are apt to run together because the answer to one may give rise to answers to others. For example, if we say in answer to (iii), that all tokens of a certain word (say, ‘cat’) have something in common besides being tokens of that word—they are all spelled ‘c’-‘a’-‘t’, for example—then we may be inclined to say to (vi) that spelling makes a word token a token of ‘cat’ rather than some other type; and to (vii) that word tokens of ‘cat’ are to be individuated on the basis of their being spelled ‘c’-‘a’-‘t’; and to (viii) that we think something is a token of ‘cat’ when we see that it is spelled ‘c’-‘a’-‘t’; and to (ii) that the word ‘cat’ itself is to be individuated by its spelling; and to (i) that a word type is a sequence of letters—e.g. the word ‘cat’ just is the sequence of letters &lt;‘c’, ‘a’, ‘t’&gt;; and to (iv) that we know about a particular word, about what properties it has, by perceiving its tokens: it has all the properties that every one of its tokens has (except for properties types cannot have, e.g., being concrete).