That indeed was a big concern, and the initial proposal assumed that it at least has to survive the lexical analysis. At some point there were two syntaxes, `us

That indeed was a big concern, and the initial proposal assumed that it at least has to survive the lexical analysis. At some point there were two syntaxes, `use strict` (optionally followed by a comma and other tokens) or `if (false) use(strict)` at one's choice. In comparison Hopwood's proposal was not even an actual proposal but quickly adopted due to its simplicity and robustness. The only complaint was a space in the literal.