[16]
and by
ambiguity I mean not merely the kind of which
I have already spoken, where the sense is uncertain,
as in the clause Chremetem audivi percussisse Demean,1
[p. 207]
but also that form of ambiguity which, although
it does not actually result in obscuring the sense,
falls into the same verbal error as if a man should say
visum a se hominem librum scribentem (that he had
seen a man writing a book). For although it is
clear that the book was being written by the man,2
the sentence is badly put together, and its author
has made it as ambiguous as he could.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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