Thursday, February 4, 2010
Vague, or too vague?
An example of a vague sentence came up while me and one of my good friends’ were talking the other day about animals. During the conversation, I mentioned that dogs are better than cats. This is considered a vague sentence because it does not say what they are better at or even what makes them better. This sentence can be perceived in many different ways. A sentence can be vague but still have one general meaning that everyone will know what it is relating to. When a sentence could have many different meanings behind it and has people not thinking all the same idea, is when the sentence is considered to be “too vague”. So since the sentence, “Dogs are better then cats”, could have so many different meanings behind it to where not everyone would come up with the same idea, the sentence is considered to be “too vague”.
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I agree; that sentence gives no reason behind why dogs are better than cats and is left open to be interpreted by others. I feel like most likely a sentence is too vague when someone says "something" is better than "something". In addition, the words bigger, smaller, rounder, or shorter can also make a sentence vague if no explanation is given. For my example I used when my friend said a necklace was big and "kind of big". It left no information to me to really figure out what necklace she was really talking about the same way your friend left no reason why dogs are better. Your example was a great demonstration of a sentence being too vague.
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