What about Tennant’s claim that a proof is “a syntactic object consisting only of sentences” as opposed to diagrams? A proof is never a syntactic object. A formal derivation on its own is a syntactic object but not a proof. Without an interpretation of the language of the formal system the end-formula of the derivation says nothing; and so nothing is proved. Without a demonstration of the system’s soundness with respect to the interpretation, one may lack sufficient reason to believe that all derivable conclusions are true. A formal derivation plus an interpretation and soundness proof can be a proof of the derived conclusion, but that whole package is not a syntactic object. Moreover, the part of the proof which really is a syntactic object, the formal derivation, need not consist solely of sentences; it can consist of diagrams.