On Hitting an Old Woman With My Electric Scooter in Highgate Village

Some details of the incident have been changed in order to protect the author’s identity should the matter be brought to court.

If a writer is to convince his reader of his way of thinking it is indispensable that he first define his terms. The reader, should he start off with any distorted understanding of the concepts which the author intends to lay out, is apt to fall into misunderstandings. As clear as the speaker’s words may be, and as attentive as his interlocutor might be in listening to them, if each participant begins from a different pole of meaning they cannot but fail to come to a mutual understanding. Worse, they may walk away from the exchange with an entirely new, strange idea which neither person wished to communicate, believing erroneously that what is now rattling around in their head is precisely what the other wished to say.