Punctuational-ambiguity.docx

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Lack—or overuse—of punctuation (especially commas) can alter meaning and/or result in ambiguity. Ambiguous sentences are hard to understand and can be misinterpreted, thus potentially putting lives at risk. Example 1: “Most of the time, travellers worry about their luggage.” Now delete the comma after the fourth word to totally change the meaning of this sentence: “Most of the time travellers worry about their luggage” Example 2: “Stop clubbing baby seals”

"Let's eat Grandma." vs. "Let's eat, Grandma!"

A comma: the difference between respecting your elders, and cannibalism. A woman: without her, man is nothing. A woman without her man is nothing.

Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy--will you let me be yours? Jane Unfortunately, John was far from pleased. In fact, he was heartbroken. You see, John was familiar

with Jane's peculiar ways of misusing punctuation marks. And so to decipher the true meaning of her email, he had to re-read it with the marks altered: Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Jane With the oxford Comma: We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin Without the oxford comma: We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.

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When I sing well, ladies feel sick. When I sing, well ladies feel sick.

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Watch out – man eating apes!

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Watch out – man-eating apes!

The man dropped the bullet in his mouth. The man dropped, the bullet in his mouth.

Wanted: One night stand Wanted: One-Night Stand

Dear Mother-in-Law,

It was a shame you had to stay here. For such a short time, I thought I might have coped, but it was unbearable. Seeing you leave, the relief was immense. When I heard we might see you again soon, I wanted to end it all. By saying goodbye

now, I hope I will not have to say it to you again for a long time. If you have the opportunity to spend Christmas elsewhere next year, please do. Not much love Matthew Mother-in-law had a mini heart-attack after reading this letter, so she decided to be the good person and assume that the above letter had punctuation misplaced and it actually read like thisDear Mother-in-Law, It was a shame you had to stay here for such a short time. I thought I might have coped, but it was unbearable seeing you leave. The relief was immense when I heard we might see you again soon. I wanted to end it all by saying goodbye now. I hope I will not have to say it to you again for a long time. If you have the opportunity to spend Christmas elsewhere next year, please do not.

Much love Matthew AMBIGUITY THROUGH PUNCTUATION

Search Google for "punctuation ambiguity" and you will come up with some interesting results. Punctuation ambiguity, it seems, is a psychological hypnosis technique. Interesting—but not what we're going to focus on here. For us, punctuation ambiguity is ambiguity due to punctuation—or lack thereof. Ambiguity through punctuation is probably the most common type of ambiguity that one encounters nowadays (thanks to texting and email). While you can often figure out what the speaker means to say despite an ambiguity, it will probably take a good deal more effort decoding it than it would have for the speaker to punctuate correctly in the first place. We'll begin with a perpetually relevant example. Suppose you were to read this:

"I like cooking my grandmother and my dog." What is your reaction? Presumably, disgust. At the very least, curiosity. Why? Because there is nothing truly ambiguous about the sentence above. We must assume, rather, that the speaker did not mean to betray a liking for cooking his or her family and pets. This leaves us to assume that the speaker meant to punctuate like so: "I like cooking, my grandmother, and my dog." Much more family-friendly. Now consider these: "Woman: without her, man is a savage." "Woman, without her man, is a savage." Without punctuation, the two sentences are identical. With their respective punctuation, the meaning is changed quite significantly. The same could be said for the statements "No, don't stop!" and "No! Dont! Stop!" But you get the point.