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For example, suppose you wish to say
This particular example is true, because you could put any natural number in for x and the statement "x = x" would be true. On the other hand, "For any natural number x, x = 2" is false, because you could put, say, 3 in for x and get the false statement "3 = 2". However, "For any even prime number x, x = 2" is true, because 2 is the only even prime number.
The form of a universal quantification
Every universal quantification statement uses a dummy variable[?], such as the x in the above example. x could be replaced with any other symbol, and the meaning of the statement wouldn't change, as long as that symbol isn't being used anywhere else. (In a less formal context, we might use a pronoun instead; for example, we could say "For any natural number, it is equal to itself"; here, "it" takes the place of the dummy variable. Even less formally, "Any natural number is equal to itself".)
It's also necessary to specify the universe of discourse of the dummy variable. This allows us to capture the difference between, for example, "Everything is evil" ("For any x, x is evil") and "All humans are evil" ("For any human x, x is evil"). In our example, the universe of discourse was originally the set of natural numbers; later we changed it to the set of even prime numbers. It's not necessary for the universe of discourse to be a set in terms of formal set theory, and universal quantification can be used in logical theories that don't make any reference to sets. Indeed, ordinary predicate logic usually takes the universe of discourse to be everything under discussion, at least at the fundamental level.
We said that the statements to be covered by a universal quantification must fit a certain template. Call this template P(x). That is, P(x) is a specific statement about x; formally, it should be a predicate[?] in one variable. In the example above, P(x) is the statement "x = x". P(x) is known as the (I don't know what it's called; can anybody help out here?). By the way, it's possible that P(x) doesn't mention x at all. You could take P(x) to be "The sky is blue" and say "For any natural number x, the sky is blue". This is usually a silly thing to say, since there's no reason to mention x in that case; you could just say "The sky is blue" and be done with it. Nevertheless, such a case may come up in a degenerate situation.
Several phrasings are used for universal quantification, such as:
(The last five symbolizations are uncommon nowadays.)
Informally, the "for any x" or "∀x" might well appear after P(x), or even in the middle of it if it's a long phrase. Formally, however, the phrase that introduces the dummy variable should always be placed in front. (In this example, the universe of discourse of x is everything under discussion, the most fundamental universe of discourse.)
How you restrict the universe of discourse depends on the nature of the underlying logical theory.
First, you might be using a theory with more than one type. For example, suppose that you're studying a formal set theory with ur-elements[?] (objects that are not sets), rather than ordinary set theory (where everything is a set). Then you could have two types of objects, sets and ur-elements, which might be indicated differently in your notation. For example, suppose that ur-elements are given by lowercase letters, while sets are given by uppercase letters. Then the statement
If you're using set theory (as almost all of mathematics does), then you can use sets themselves to define scope. For example, if N is the set of natural numbers, then
Additionally, you can use material implication to further restrict a universe of discourse to only those x such that some statement Q(x) is true. The statement
This can be used to cover both of the cases above. For example, to deal with ur-elements in untyped predicate logic (the ordinary kind), you just need a logical predicate[?] that says whether something is a set or an ur-element; say, Sx iff x is a set. Then to say that A has no members that are ur-elements, write
We need a list of algebraic properties of universal quantification, such as distributivity over conjunction, and so on.
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