What about “if(f)”? Pronounced ‘ifeff’, but spelled ‘if(f)’ so it’s both:
Easy to tell that this is a variant of ‘if’, and if you round things off to colloquial ‘if’ then you’ll at least sort of get what’s being said (context probably helps).
Easy to tell that it’s not just ‘if’ or a typo for ‘if’.
I wouldn’t expect if(f) to be linguistically successful; it’s weird in a not-quite-a-word way that means it can’t ever become a regular vocabulary item.
Alt: I think ifif makes much more sense than ifeff. It’s super unclear where the ‘e’ comes from or why there’s two ’f’s, but “if and only if” is “ifif” if you take the start and the end.
What about “if(f)”? Pronounced ‘ifeff’, but spelled ‘if(f)’ so it’s both:
Easy to tell that this is a variant of ‘if’, and if you round things off to colloquial ‘if’ then you’ll at least sort of get what’s being said (context probably helps).
Easy to tell that it’s not just ‘if’ or a typo for ‘if’.
I wouldn’t expect if(f) to be linguistically successful; it’s weird in a not-quite-a-word way that means it can’t ever become a regular vocabulary item.
Alt: I think ifif makes much more sense than ifeff. It’s super unclear where the ‘e’ comes from or why there’s two ’f’s, but “if and only if” is “ifif” if you take the start and the end.
How about if’f or if-f? Both are easier to type than if(f), but still look less like an error than iff.
The whole “add punctuation” strategy still ruins the word for Scrabble, though. :(
Edit: … and I see now that gilch had the exact same idea right below.