Communication usually fails except by accident; if communication can fail, it will.
Wiio's laws are a deliberate parody of Murphy's, and the corollaries are the useful part: if a message can be understood in several ways, it will be understood in the way that does most harm.
In practice
- An email saying the scope should be revisited is read by one recipient as a delay, by another as a cut, and by the client as a renegotiation.
- A sign reading "no parking at any time" is read by every delivery driver as "not for deliveries".
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- The folk laws of argument and attention