We Painted the Wall With Cracks

[Pitchpatch]

Writers learn a special kind of ESP called Enhanced Sentence Parsing.  We must be attuned to a long roster of grammatical maladies.   Near the top of the list is the affliction of ambiguous meaning.

"We painted the walls with cracks."
More here.

We mean (probably): "We painted the cracked walls."  But we did not say what we mean.  We allowed ambiguity to seep into our sentence and it split the road of readability in two.  Like any fork in the road, we must stop in our tracks and figure out which route we're supposed to take.  Any time a reader slams on the brakes because what you wrote was unclear, you've failed your core competency.  You have one job, dear Writer: keep the reader reading.

The first path demands a literal interpretation: we painted cracks onto the walls.  Ridiculous, you say?  Let me add context.  We're painting a backdrop for a cheap horror movie.  The backdrop is a dirty gray cement wall.  The director asked us to make it look more ancient, more damaged.  So we painted the "wall" with "cracks."  More accurately, we painted the prop wall with cracks.  That one extra word ("prop") blocks the second road with a detour sign hung with flashing yellow lights and we have no choice but swerve left and continue along the first road.

The second path of comprehension is the intended one: the walls had cracks so we painted over them.  We painted the cracked walls.

Sometimes we practice ambiguity to keep the reader in suspense or for some other intended dramatic purpose.  Most times it's an unwelcome, uninvited, disruptive guest.

I'll record examples in this topic.  Here's the first.



CAPTION: "Frank getting dressed before a performance in his hotel room at the Eden Roc in Miami, 1965."

- source

The caption permits two legitimate interpretations:

(1) We see Frank dressing.  He's about to give a private performance in his Eden Roc hotel room -- maybe for a small group of very special guests.

(2) We see Frank dressing in his hotel room.  He's about to leave and perform at some big venue in Miami Beach.

To eliminate the first interpretation we need only rearrange the sentence:

CAPTION: "Frank dressing in his hotel room at the Eden Roc in Miami before a performance, 1965."

Applying the golden rule to always anchor your reader in time and space at the start of a sentence:

CAPTION: "Frank in his hotel room at the Eden Roc in Miami, 1965, getting ready to perform."

We might include the performance venue to rule out the possibility he's about to perform at the hotel's own venue.

CAPTION: "Frank in his hotel room at the Eden Roc, 1965, getting ready to perform at the Miami Arts Arena."

Well, as it turns out, he WAS performing in the Eden Roc hotel*.  Now we can remove all ambiguity from the caption.  The two facts we want to convey are:

(a) Frank pictured in his room at the Eden Roc hotel.
(b) Frank getting ready to perform at the Eden Roc hotel.

So:

CAPTION: "Frank dressing in his hotel room at the Eden Roc in Miami, 1965, where he was performing."





* FEBRUARY 1–14, 1965: Frank headlined with his old friend Joe E. Lewis in a two-week stand at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami.