In kindergarden, or first grade, my school teachers hung up words around the classroom, textualizing the world. In hebrew school I was taught that the hebrew words for "word" and "thing" are the same. In fact, in hebrew, the words embody the nature of the thing, the world. I was also taught to write "God" as "G-d." If I wrote the name, it could never be destroyed. It would be a representation of the word, not the word itself.