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Q&A Ambiguous sentences: How to tell when they need fixing?

A story of mine has the following sentence: Alyssa was possessed by a sudden, fierce urge to snatch the teacup out of her sister's hand and dump the contents into her perfectly arranged hai...

3 answers  ·  posted 5y ago by Evil Sparrow‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-14T20:45:28Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/46589
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T12:26:42Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/46589
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T12:26:42Z (almost 5 years ago)
A story of mine has the following sentence:

> Alyssa was possessed by a sudden, fierce urge to snatch the teacup out of her sister's hand and dump the contents into her perfectly arranged hair.

On further reflection, I realized this sentence is ambiguous: I never said which of the two gets the tea dumped on her head. Except, I'm not sure that the sentence really needs fixing - it wouldn't make sense for Alyssa to get mad and dump the tea on her _own_ head. (I tried to replace the pronoun with her sister's name, but the resulting sentence just felt... clumsy.)

Is there a way I can objectively tell if an ambiguous sentence will cause confusion and needs to be fixed?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-07-13T12:31:13Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 8