Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Could use clarification

Ambiguous: I was just reading an online story about the sons of Joe Montana and Wayne Gretzky playing for the same high school, and I came across this paragraph — "Redell, 69, was no stranger to Wayne Gretzky, who remembered him as a quarterback for the Canadian Football League franchise in Hamilton. In 1967, Redell led the Tiger-Cats to the Grey Cup."

That first sentence almost makes you think that Gretzky was the quarterback in Hamilton, and, of course, that's not true. We know that he was a great hockey player. The second sentence makes it obvious that Redell was the quarterback.


They might have said "...Wayne Gretzky, who remembered Redell..."


Word meanings: I looked up ambiguous, and I found "a word, phrase, or sentence whose meaning can be interpreted in more than one way." Yes, that seems to fit.


Muddled: An online ad was looking for "fiction or non-fiction novels." No such thing as a non-fiction novel.

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