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Here is a sentence. "They’ve asked how your diary looks at the end of this week and next."

Does it mean they are asking how my diary looks at the end of this week and at the end of next week? or how my diary looks at the end of this week and the whole of next week?

Where would you place the commas to mean each of the two sentences?

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  • The text is inherently ambiguous (next could be shortened from #1 next week OR #2 the end of next week). It would be a bad idea to try and "disambiguate" using commas - there's no universally acknowledged principle about how that would work, so you'd often be misunderstood anyway. But pragmatically speaking, meaning #2 is so unlikely you should simply assume meaning #1 will be understood unless you explicitly give the "full version" of #2 (in the unlikely event that's what you mean).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 27, 2022 at 13:44

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The text is ambiguous.

Unless you have context (e.g. They are only available on Fridays, …), you would need clarification.

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The overall text is ambiguous. Whether it refers to the end of this week and end of next week, or the next week in its entirety is one portion of the ambiguity. The balance is the question asking, "how my diary looks at the end of the week." Is this question asking for an availability on a particular calendar date, is it asking how my diary physically looks at the end of the week, or is it asking how my diary "looks," (or sees as in "look" over there?) at the end of the week?

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