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From: jaw@ames.UUCP (James A. Woods)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: "Our Concern is Growing":  Ortho's Triple Ambiguity (+ challenge)
Message-ID: <517@ames.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 8-Sep-84 21:34:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.517
Posted: Sat Sep  8 21:34:59 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Sep-84 04:13:01 EDT
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 14


#  CLOSE COVER BEFORE STRIKING -- world's most printed sentence

     Some years ago, the Ortho company coined the triply-ambiguous slogan

	"Our Concern is Growing"

The multiple parsing, in itself, is not unusual, but has that rare quality
of appositeness in each of its meanings.  The standard "time flies like
an arrow" may be more limber syntactically, but I challenge y'all to come
up with another triple (or higher degree) ambiguity which makes sense in
a specific, natural, context.

	-- James A. Woods  {hplabs,hao,philabs}!ames!jaw  (jaw@riacs.ARPA)