It's a compromise; there are only so many letters, numbers, and symbols available in a single keystroke on all keyboards, and I don't want there to be any ambig

It's a compromise; there are only so many letters, numbers, and symbols available in a single keystroke on all keyboards, and I don't want there to be any ambiguity with numbers and unquoted strings (e.g. interpreting the unquoted string value true as the boolean value true). So everything else needs some kind of initiator and/or container syntax to logically separate it from the other objects when interpreted by a human or machine.