"Do not crush" - Information may be clear and accurate yet still ambiguous!

Every day offers lessons in the nuances of communication from the point of view of the recipent's experience.  As dealers in information, we need to be sensitive to any potential ambiguity arising from such experience.

Familiar with the implications of some tablets being "enteric coated" and thus not intended for cutting or crushing because the active ingredients need to be released in a specific way, I recently asked a pharmacist (I got the bug like everyone else) regarding the huge antibitotic tablets she'd just dispensed, "may I crush or cut them into tiny pieces so I can swallow them?'. The accompanying literature said "do not crush or chew" but referred only to a bitter taste, not to efficacy. She advised that I could go ahead - but it would have been nice if the literature had been unambiguous.  It's if you crush the tablet, the medication won't be effective or else it's if you crush the tablet, the medication will still be effective (but there will be a terrible taste sensation).  Either way, I would have been in a position to decide independently what to do with those tablets (for example, ask for the liquid formulation!).

The information is the drug sheet was not incorrect.  It just did not take into account the experience a reader might have (in my case, having been told previously that efficacy could be negatively impacted by crushing tablets).  When we create messages, our task is to provide the appropriate information for recipients to make a decision.  As in ... "please join us Thursday for a quick demonstration of X new resource; it has come to light that complications have arisen in the past due to a misunderstanding about how to use the content on the intranet".