Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Ever since completing Professor Fenske’s course in logic, I’ve been a connoisseur of examples of unintended ambiguity. Here’s a headline from today’s Talking Points Memo website that would be ambiguous if it did not end with (photo):
McMorris Rodgers Working On
SOTU Response With Baby In Arm (PHOTO)
Without that last word, there’s no way of knowing whether Rogers was working on the speech while holding her baby, or planning to deliver the speech while holding her baby. (Be sure to look at the photograph. It’s a wonderful image.)
I would have rewritten the headline.
Ambiguity is not vagueness. Here are the definitions from my Mac’s dictionary:
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