Which of the following sentence is irrefutable? [closed]

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?


Solution 1:

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.