@markarayner I used examples like that back when I used to help people learn English. Well done!
@markarayner Reminds me of just the other day when my roommate asked how I read something about a game where you got some early access stuff if you bought it before some date but because of lack of punctuation and/or extra spacing between some of the lines to indicate they were different sentences it was unclear if you kept having access to the extras after that date or not.

@markarayner

Nice example for showing this, you immediately see it would have been much more readable with a serif font with some specifically designed italics variant instead of just slanting a sans serif one ;-)

@Lapizistik @markarayner Yup. Italic > Oblique when it comes to legibility.
Revisiting Jerry's famous Mary had a little lamb heuristic

 Let me propose a hypothesis "Anything written/expressed in natural language is inherently ambiguous".  As one of hallmarks of civilization ...

@markarayner
Precisely why Mastodon needs to allow markup.
@markarayner @smallsco
Have you eaten grandma?
Have you eaten, grandma?
@markarayner yes. I have, for years, used a similar example regarding grammar. Insert the word 'only' into the sentence 'the vicar gave the biscuit to the monkey' at any point - it changes the meaning, sometimes significantly. As does your use of italics. OK, I'm no grammar nazi but sometimes you need to be careful not simply of what you write but of how you write it.
@[email protected]
- They did
- Wtf I never said that
- I sent you a mail
- Gravity will do
- We must
- Torture is better
- I said her

@markarayner

I have John Cleese in my head who said the different sentences with the different intonations, is it normal ? 🤔