The purpose is not to dance like an elephant.
I see two ways of interpreting this sentence:
- It is incorrect to say that "dance like an elephant" is the goal.
- The objective is to prevent dancing like an elephant.
How should the sentence be re-written to avoid the ambiguity, if the desired meaning is (1) or (2), respectively?
Edit: perhaps I should give more context info about how this question came to me.
I want to write a document which should be referred to as a guideline rather than hard rules. I describe my intent with:
The purpose of this document is not to enforce rules or regulations.
However, I want to avoid the interpretation "the author wishes to stop enforcing rules and regulations".