Reader's Digest Asia Pacific

Double Meaning

- SUBMITTED BY SUSAN ALLEN

When I was a proofreade­r, I shared with my colleagues this example to illustrate how writing can skew based on gender:

A professor wrote on the blackboard, “Woman without her man is nothing.”

The students were then instructed to insert the proper punctuatio­n.

The men wrote, “Woman, without her man, is nothing.” The women wrote, “Woman! Without her, man is nothing.”

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