zoi one of two words in selmo'a ZOI (the other being la'o). zoi quotes a non-Lojban phrase. zoi is one of the Magic Words.
zoi can be a really useful quoting mechanism when you don't know the proper Lojban word for something. la'e zoi gy. foo .gy can stand in for the concept represented by foo.
The choice of delimiter for zoi is both a stylist and informational choice. The only requirement is that it not a word that appears in the quoted text. The following delimiters can be used to communicate specific intent:
| .fanva. | This zoi quote is a translation of some preceding material. | |||
| .glic. | A variation of .gy. | |||
| .gy. | This zoi quote is quoting English text. | |||
| .kliz. | This zoi delimiter suggests the user is quoting Klingon. Klingon writing has no k or z, and Klingon speech has nothing confusable for z. As well, .kliz. is reminiscent of the language name. | |||
| .url. | This zoi quote is quoting a url. | |||
| .xlali. | This guard word suggests (but does not require that) the speaker doesn't like the quotation. | |||
| .xy. | A good guard word for English as the letter combination is rare and it is a non-English phoneme. It may sound like "uh huh," however. | |||
A long text should really use a long and unlikely word as a delimiter, to remove the possibility of it appearing in the text.
You are limited to using Lojban words as your delimiter in zoi. Punctuation, like "" or <> are not valid lojban words. If you use punctuation in a zoi quote, you may be understood, you won't be speaking proper Lojban.
For every magic word, the interaction with all other magic words is defined. This table covers all interactions of zoi+word, where word is any of the magic words, both alone and within their own grammatical contexts.
| bu | zoi bu | [ungrammatical] | zoi binds bu as the first delimiter, but does not find a second delimiter. | |
| fa'o | zoi fa'o | [ungrammatical] | zoi binds fa'o as the first delimiter, but does not find a second delimiter to bind. | |
| lo'u | zoi lo'u | [ungrammatical] | zoi binds lo'u as the first delimiter, but does not find a second delimiter to bind. | |
| le'u | zoi le'u | [ungrammatical] | zoi binds le'u as the first delimiter, but does not find a second delimiter to bind. | |
| sa | zoi sa | [ungrammatical] | zoi binds sa as the first delimiter, but does not find a second delimiter to bind. | |
| si | zoi si | [ungrammatical] | zoi binds si as the first delimiter, but does not find a second delimiter to bind. | |
| su | zoi su | [ungrammatical] | zoi binds su as the first delimiter, but does not find a second delimiter to bind. | |
| zei | zoi zei | [ungrammatical] | zoi binds zei as the first delimiter, but does not find a second delimiter to bind. | |
| zo | zoi zo | [ungrammatical] | zoi binds zo as the first delimiter, but does not find a second delimiter to bind. | |
| zoi | zoi | [ungrammatical] | zoi does not find a delimiter to bind. | |
| zoi zoi | [ungrammatical] | zoi binds zoi as the first delimiter, but does not find a second delimiter to bind. | ||
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