Quantity implicatures had been haunting me for about a decade, when I finally decided it was time to put my mind at rest. Writing this book proved to be of considerable therapeutic value, but of course my hope is that it will be of value (therapeutic or otherwise) to its readers as well. Since I have been thinking about this topic for quite a few years, there was ample opportunity for changing my mind, which I did a number of times. I've had my heretical phases (most recently in my 2005 paper on disjunction), but they are behind me now, and I'm glad to be back in the Gricean fold.

I have tried to produce a text that is accessible to a fairly broad audience, including students of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. In recent years, the literature on my topic has become increasingly esoteric. I don't welcome this development, and I don't see it was inevitable, either. Be that as it may, my aim was to write a book that presupposes little more than general intelligence and common sense, though some familiarity with a handful of very basic linguistic and logical notions may prove to be useful. A brief compendium of the latter will be found at the end of the book.