Amphiboly

What it is

Relies on a sentence whose grammar allows more than one reading, then treats the convenient reading as the intended one.

Related

• Equivocation fallacy
  Equivocation shifts the meaning of a word, amphiboly the meaning of a whole sentence's grammar.
• Ambiguity aversion bias
  Ambiguous phrasing creates uncertainty that we resolve toward the reading we prefer.

References

• Wikipedia: Amphiboly en.wikipedia.org
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies iep.utm.edu
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies plato.stanford.edu
• Wikipedia: List of fallacies en.wikipedia.org
• Purdue OWL: Logical fallacies owl.purdue.edu

More in “Language and ambiguity”