classic joke depends on a grammatical ambiguity for its humor, for example: "Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know". Songs and poetry often rely on ambiguous words for artistic effect, as in the song title "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" (where "blue" can refer to the color or to sadness).

In the narrative, ambiguity can be introduced in several ways: motive, plot, and character. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the latter type of ambiguity with notable