Ambiguity is a no-no

Ambiguity is when something can be understood in more than one way. Ambiguity has its place in humor, when you are frequently led to expect one thing, and then something else happens. Puns rely on ambiguity by definition. Ambiguity belongs in poetry, which not infrequently means two or more things at once. Figures of speech are a type of ambiguity, where the surface meaning is understood not to be meant. You even find ambiguity in advertising, when they want to make you think the product is better than it is. (Sometimes it’s worse than mere ambiguity. Read this article about deliberate obfuscation called Dark Patterns.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to come up with examples of these. (Some will be trivial, some you might have to think about for a while.) Okay, here’s one example, from my good buddies, Frank and Ernest:

But in expository writing, when you’re explaining something, you want to avoid ambiguity as much as you can. My first rule of good writing is to be clear. (This and the other four are in the essay I mention in the right margin.) Work hard to avoid being misunderstood. Ponder how what you write might be misinterpreted. Get someone to read the material. The rule is that when you have someone read what you wrote, if they get something wrong, the problem is in the writing. That’s why editors are so valuable. I have a related rule that I post on my wall:

Bad writing must never be justified with the claim that the reader will figure it out.

This policy of getting someone else to read your stuff is more important than you might think. I read a Scientific American article recently that called to mind the trickiness of removing ambiguity all by yourself. Look at this sign:

Being a bicycle sympathizer, this ambiguity never occurred to me: Is it telling drivers to watch out for bikes, or is it reminding bicyclists that they don’t own the road? Apparently enough drivers thought the sign was telling bicyclists to stay out of the way that transportation departments are putting up signs that say something like “Bicyclists may use full lane.” The article also mentioned that some people interpret the phrase “antibiotic resistance” to mean one’s body becoming resistant to the curative effects of antibiotics instead of germs resisting the lethal effects of antibiotics on themselves. Read the article to find out how the medical community is being encouraged to get around this one.

Here’s the point: Do everything you can to prevent misunderstanding: proofread, try to think of ways to get it wrong, and have another person read your writing.

Do I make myself clear???