Use–mention distinction  The use–mention distinction is a foundational concept of analytic philosophy, according to which it is necessary to make a distinction between a word (or phrase) and it, and many philosophical works have been "vitiated by a failure to distinguish use and mention". The distinction is disputed by Jacques Derrida. The distinction between use and mention can be illustrated for the word "cheese":  The first sentence is a statement about the substance called "cheese": it "uses" the word 'cheese' to refer to that substance. The second is a statement about the word 'cheese' as a signifier: it "mentions" the word without "using" it to refer to anything other than itself. In written language, mentioned words or phrases often appear between single or double quotation marks (as in "The name 'Chicago' contains three vowels") or in italics (as in "When I say "honey", I mean the sweet stuff that bees make"). In philosophy, single quotation marks are typically used, while in other fields (such as linguistics) italics are much more common. Style authorities such as "Strunk and White" insist that mentioned words or phrases must always be made visually distinct in this manner. On the other hand, used words or phrases (much more common than mentioned ones) do not bear any typographic markings. In spoken language, or in absence of the use of stylistic cues such as quotation marks or italics in written language, the audience must identify mentioned words or phrases through semantic and pragmatic cues. If quotation marks are used, it is sometimes customary to distinguish between the quotation marks used for speech and those used for mentioned words, with double quotes in one place and single in the other:  A few authorities recommend against using different types of quotation marks for speech and mentioned words and recommend one style of quotation mark to be used for both purposes. The general phenomenon of a term's having different references in different contexts was called "suppositio" (substitution) by medieval logicians. It describes how one has to substitute a term in a sentence based on its meaning—that is, based on the term's referent. In general, a term can be used in several ways. For nouns, they are the following:  The last sentence contains a mention example. The use–mention distinction is especially important in analytic philosophy. Failure to properly distinguish use from mention can produce false, misleading, or meaningless statements or category errors.