The Ambiguity Trap
‘Sell your home for as little as £390!’
The estate agent whose flyer came through every letterbox in town was either a time traveller from the 1920s or in sore need of a proofreader.
I don’t know about you, but if I were selling my home these days I’d hope to get a bit more than four hundred quid for it!
Of course, the flyer is referring to the agent’s fee, not the house price, and after the initial jolt of comic false association, we know this. Most of us are pretty good at finding sense through context, after all.
But does it make you want that agent marketing your house?
It’s a classic example of the Ambiguity Trap – aka ‘But I Knew What I Meant!’ – and we’ve probably all fallen into it at least once in our writing lives. It’s one of many reasons not to proofread your own work.
In short, because you know what you intend to say, your brain will find that meaning – and not the possible alternatives – when you read back. Especially once you’ve shifted your attention to checking for typos. So, when an estate agent writes copy with the aim of emphasising their low fees, those low fees are the obvious focus of the sentence – to them. Just not to most readers.
Shorter? We read what we expect to read. (That’s why proofreaders train!)
Unintentional ambiguities in writing can be funny, like this one, but they can also hold the door open to meanings that are confusing, misleading, offensive – sometimes even dangerous. At best, inadvertently ambiguous phrasing will distract your readers from your message and connect you in their minds with a mistake.
No one wants that.
So, before you print five hundred copies of your flyer, or release it to a hundreds-strong emailing list, send it to me! I’ll check your text for ambiguities – and pick up any typos, too.
And if you’re a time traveller from the 1920s, there are some questions about temporal mechanics and philosophy that I’d love to discuss with you…
Sincerely Yours,
The Proofs Detective
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