"more often than not what..."

Bluestblue--

Your quote is the sort of prose that I dislike.

A rough paraphrase would be, "I'll tell you what I want you to know. (This is not necessarily either what you need to know or a description of the way the world really is.)"

Noddy, when I read it I get more of something like this:

"When we talk, our words do not exactly convey our thoughts. However, the hearer is usually able to interpret our meaning."

The talk is "loose" because it is not an exact transcription of our thoughts. The interpretation is possible because of the resemblance between what we say and the thoughts we mean to communicate.

Bluestblue, perhaps the correct meaning can be deduced from the surrounding text.

(Better punctuation would have helped that sentence: "...in other words, we do not necessarily say what we think; but more often than not, what we say interpretively resembles what we intend to communicate.")

Wy--

I let my biases get in the way. Your reading is much more accurate than mine.

Thanks a lot for your helpful explanations.

Blues

Exactly. The thing is, more and more writers are omitting commas and semicolons that tend to help clarify long sentences made up of many clauses.