Assumptions happen all the time and are needed all the time. Often right, sometimes wrong, on rare occasions devastatingly wrong. Still, we need them so much that it is impossible to get rid of it. There's this sentence, "I never said she stole my car", which you can say in 7 different ways (e.g. I never said she stole my car or I never said or...) . And that is just a simple sentence, without ambiguous words or contexts. Think of all the different ways you can interpret someone else's words. It's overwhelming, really. I make mistakes, too, like when I understood thenewgreen's words differently in my Hubwheel Bar post and responded in a way that didn't fit. The best way to handle something like that, I think, is to take a step back and think about what you wanted to communicate, why it failed and what knowledge you need to communicate to clarify the situation. I sometimes get excited and I want to respond immediately, so I need to remind myself to actively take that step back. Communication is key, after all.