Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Criminal Sentence 332: Ambiguous Headline

An interesting headline on a news Web site:

"Men don't cheat because their wives are ugly"

You can read this in two ways. The way it was intended:

"Ugly wives do not cause men to cheat"

The other way:

"Men don't cheat; the reason is their wives are ugly"

The first time you read the headline, which way did you read it?

3 comments:

  1. My initial understanding was option no.2

    ReplyDelete
  2. I thought option#1.


    Jeffrey

    ReplyDelete
  3. Apparently I read it the first way and expected the sentence to be followed with, "They cheat for another reason." Could have been a good article.

    ReplyDelete

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