Question #b1d19

1 Answer
May 23, 2017

To infer is to make educated guesses about something, whereas to imply is to suggest something that isn't expressly stated.

Explanation:

If I showed a picture of a cat sitting on a table next to a spilled glass of water and asked you what happened in the photo, you might say that the cat knocked over the glass and spilled it. By drawing conclusions on something by processing the given information, you made an inference , or inferred something.

Suppose I say "Alex and Jackie were sitting next to each other on the day of the math test. Not only did they both get problem number 5 wrong, but they each wrote down '27' as their answer even though the correct answer was '473.'" Although I didn't say that Alex and Jackie cheated off each other, I implied it because I suggested that something happened by giving you a circumstance and enough evidence so that you could draw a logical conclusion.

Although inferring and implying mean different things, they are often used in tandem. By implying something, a writer can have a reader draw inferences .