Demons are real, I believe, but the moment we try to literalise them - describe their shape and detail their habits - we tend to slip into fantasy.

For example, in some versions of 'csh(1)', single quotes literalize every character inside them except '!'

We do not have to literalize their words to perceive their meaning or their intention to join in the singing of their creedal song.

Following the examples of King Pleasure and Jon Hendricks, he likes to literalize the old metaphor about telling a story in a solo.

It brings together two singers who literalize the idea of telling a story in a solo: they're both known for taking famous instrumental improvisations and putting words to them.

Ms. Warner underscored the fact that she never wants to literalize the location of "The Waste Land," to seek out the obvious, like a garbage dump.

But cutensils also literalize some of the ideas of "product semantics" as taught in the design schools in the 1980's, most notably at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

This perennial-favorite pair of singers from the 1950's (when they used to be a trio with Dave Lambert) has hooked up again, singing their breathless vocalise; they literalize the notion of "telling a story with a solo" because they take famous solos from jazz history and put words to them.

But in a move at once subtle and radical, Mr. Baldessari has added new rules to his game, printing photos on surfaces a few inches thick and cutting out elements to create shadowed recesses that literalize the interplay between presence and absence, whole and part, the revealed and the obscured.