OK: let's look at this thread from the beginning. Not the post you responded to, but the one they were responding to. In particular, consider how the word "aver

OK: let's look at this thread from the beginning. Not the post you responded to, but the one they were responding to. In particular, consider how the word "average" was intended in the post you responded to, and what aspect(s) of the root post that was addressing. Then consider, given the context of the whole thread, how "expected" was intended here: > Junior soldiers are not expected to read documents like this. Webster's for "expect": 1 c. to consider bound in duty or obligated (1a and 1b also more-or-less apply) That's what I take as the use of expect here, fitting with the thread before. Most soldiers are not obligated to read this work. No-one will be surprised or disappointed or pissed-off if most soldiers never crack it open. And then consider how I (and others) may have read your use of "expected" in your response to that: > If it is true that junior soldiers are not expected to read a document such as this, then the document should not state that the intended audience is soldiers. By this you mean that the authors anticipate (sense 2 of "expect" in Webster's) that some of those reading it will be soldiers, that they expect (some!) soldiers to be among their readers—at least I assume so, given your agreement with the notion that most soldiers are not obligated to read the text. You've been writing past everyone in this thread because your original response was a non sequitur to the thread-in-progress, which was about who is obligated or intended, in practice, to read this document. chrisseaton was addressing something different from what you're trying to argue over. You aren't even contradicting him because you're talking about different things. Besides, your reading is every bit as "connotative" as chrisseaton's, except that you're ignoring a big chunk of the (not long!) sentence you quoted in order to preserve yours as the exclusively correct reading. In particular, there are two senses of "audience" at play, between this thread and the text in question. Your reading that the piece is intended to be understandable by a "Soldier"—so that is the "audience"—does have support in the text, clearly, but the contention that the "audience", in the sense of who is actually expected to read it, and so for whose needs we may expect the text to have been crafted, is more precisely specified in the second part of the sentence, is also supported by the text, and is what comes out when the entire sentence is considered. That second sense is what was under discussion, originally.