What's the word that combines inclusion/exclusion?

Question

Like visibility combines show/hidden, what's the word that combines inclusion/exclusion?

EDIT: The problem is inspired by the VIM reference manual:

A character motion is either inclusive or exclusive. When inclusive, the start and end position of the motion are included in the operation. When exclusive, the last character towards the end of the buffer is not included. Linewise motions always include the start and end position.

I want to know what's the right word to use for describing the inclusive/exclusive property of a character motion, which I thought is like visibility to show/hidden.

As RegDwight said, I am looking for the hypernym for inclusion/exclusion for this content/condition. Sorry for my poor and misleading English.

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly, you are looking for a hypernym of inclusion and exclusion. Without further context, it is quite hard — if not impossible — to provide a definite answer. There are lots of potential candidates (say, composition, content, form, comprehension, constitution, policy, condition...). Going by etymology alone, in-/ex- + claudere (shut in/out), closure would be yet another candidate.

Edit: now that you have provided some context, you have actually answered your own question. Look at the very first sentence of the quote:

A character motion is either inclusive or exclusive.

So, in this case, the hypernym of inclusive/exclusive is motion. The visibility can be either "show" or "hide"; the motion can be either "inclusive" or "exclusive".

Answer 2

Inclusion is the act of including and exclusion is the act of excluding. Therefore these two words are not an indicative of state like visibility (shown or hidden).

This means that the states are actually "included" and "not included". You could then use the word "Included" itself or maybe the sentence "Is included?" to indicate what you need.

Answer 3

In light of your update, I would suggest either just motion (as RegDwight suggested), or if that doesn't have the precision you need (insofar as it can refer to the entire action as well as the property of inclusivity/exlusivity of the action), you could use motion type or motion mode.

When there is no ready-made hypernym available, you gotta build it yourself! :)

For that reason I would also suggest explicitly defining the phrase before using it. E.g. if you are updating the VIM manual and want to refer to motion type later, then I would add the following sentence before the final sentence in your snippet:

This property of a character motion is called its motion type.

Answer 4

I would use "inclusivity", 'though many might say this is stretching its proper meaning.

Answer 5

Your question is not quite symmetrical, which might not be helping.

shown/hidden == included/excluded

or

show/hide == include/exclude

In any case, I think that a possible answer would be inclusion (included/excluded).

Answer 6

As Reg Dwight says, OP seeks a hypernym - a word with a broad meaning that more specific words fall under; a superordinate.

But OP himself cites visibility as the hypernym for shown/hidden, where obviously this simplistic classification merely derives directly from the fact that, in this context, visible=shown.

I'm not convinced it's strictly correct to call visibility a hypernym at all - it's simply the appropriate noun form for one of the sub-classifications. Effectively, a "rule-derived pseudo-hypernym".

By the same token, inclusivity meets OP's requirement. I note that mickeyf proposed this long ago - but he didn't justify it (even though it's still the right answer).