troublesome line division

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

from our own paul mcfedries's Word Spy book (2004), p. 190:

   ...The use of the term was possibly inspired by the semi-
   otician Umberto Eco's 1967 essay...

line divisions courtesy of the editors, or (more likely) their
word-processing programs.

what i  want to know is: just how close did umberto eco come to being
an otician?

arnold "can you hear me now" zwicky at csli.stanford.edu