If you take my meaning...

This post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But it's related to software, I guess, because it's about logic and meaning.

I see certain recurring expressions in writing (which, by the way, I've used myself) that are interesting because we immediately know what they mean but they don't stand scrutiny. In these cases, the communicator wants us to understand what they mean (and we do!), in spite of what they're saying. Examples:

I see "If you are reading this, [...]" surprisingly often. Of course I'm reading it! How could I even encounter the condition, in order to evaluate it, if I weren't reading it? Imagine treating a compiler that way. Actually, the equivalent of that for a compiler is "if (true) {[...]}". "If you are reading this on a weekend, [...]" is logical because it has two potential evaluations, and even an interesting case where the evaluation goes from true to false or false to true during parsing of the condition. But "If you are reading this, [...]" has only one possible evaluation, so it's redundant and can always be removed just like "if (true)" can always be removed.

"I don't sweat the small stuff." Well, "small stuff" is subjective. Each of us has a set of "stuff" that we consider small. We don't, by definition, sweat anything in that set. The writer seems to be implying an easy-going nature, but I wonder whether the opposite is true. The writer is saying "I've noticed other people worrying about a thing (or things) that I, myself, think is/are small and not to be worried about." Further, the writer has deemed this experience worth mentioning. Their mentioning it is evidence that the experience itself was not, for them, "small stuff". So rather than being led to believe that the writer's set of small stuff is itself smaller than usual (which is one possible interpretation), it seems more likely, given that their first inclination is to mention something that is inside that set, that it is in fact larger than usual. And, consequently, I also suspect (although I might be wrong) that there's an implication that there might be some friction if anyone else worries about something that's in the writer's "small stuff" set, and/or doesn't worry about anything that is.

"Don't get me wrong, [...]". This means "I've just said something that, now I think about, either incompletely or incorrectly represents me. What I'd like you to do is to magically disregard any aspect of what I just said that doesn't represent me, and to focus on the aspect(s) that do. And here's another bit of information to help you do that, [...]". It might be good instead to go back and fix where the auto-misrepresentation occurred, and then remove the part implying that the reader is the one who needs to pull their socks up.

And finally, I love Rod Stewart's song "I Was Only Joking", which contains the line "Collected lovers like butterflies". I can think of these meanings for that, can you think of others?

1. The intended meaning: "I collected lovers in a similar way to how I would collect butterflies."
2. "I collected lovers who are similar to butterflies."
3. "I collected lovers in the same way that butterflies collect lovers."
4. "Amorous partners, when assembled together, have a fondness for butterflies."