amphibology

[Kate Nicole Ranft <kater@csd.uwm.edu>]

Dear Friends and Guerrillas:

Thank you.  You've all been tremendously helpful.  I am downloading all of 
your suggestions and compiling a file called "Tricks."  The discussion 
about commas is particularly interesting.  I also have spent many a 
session trying to counter the comma = pause concept.  

As an aside: just this morning this lovely gem of a word popped up on my 
Word-A-Day listserv.  Thought I would forward it as a special treat (not 
trick):

am.phi.bol.o.gy \.am(p)-f*-'ba:-*-je-\ n [ME amphibologie, fr. LL 
   amphibologia, alter. of L amphibolia], fr. Gk amphibolos 1: ambiguity in 
   language 2: a phrase or sentence ambiguous because of its grammatical 
   construction - called also amphiboly

 
   Baran, James, Predators and parasites in Le Pere Goriot, Vol. 47,
   Symposium, 04-01-1993, pp 3. "It is also possible to find in this
   paradoxical representation of man as both predator and parasite yet
   another instance of the modernist instability and amphibology of
   Balzac's characters."
 
 
Knock yourselves out,



-Kate Ranft

P.S.  Carl, just spit it out in your best gutteral German accent.  
Chances are you'll come pretty close. ;-)