From the course: Writing with Flair: How to Become an Exceptional Writer

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Ambiguity: Exercises

Ambiguity: Exercises

From the course: Writing with Flair: How to Become an Exceptional Writer

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Ambiguity: Exercises

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- Ambiguity can also occur at so many levels of your writing so you really need to be able to spot the many different ways that it can crop up. So, let's look at some more examples of ambiguity and practice this skill of eliminating every shade of doubt about what you, as the writer, could mean. The friendship between Leonard and Mark has never been the same since he left town. What's the ambiguity? So which of the two friends has actually left town. Let's suppose it is Leonard. So then, how would you make that clear within the sentence? Okay, to resolve an ambiguity like this, you've got three basic choices: one, you can make things clearer for your readers by actually naming the thing about which there is doubt, like this: The friendship between Leonard and Mark has never been the same since Leonard left town. But as you'll see in the elegance lectures, this isn't a particularly elegant way of doing it. I mean, repeating the same word in the same sentence. Okay, the second thing we…

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