As a reader of political and legal rhetoric, I have noticed that often the writer of such documents will use “crutch” words, often adjectives and adverbs, in place of details and logical arguments. It becomes a battle of slogans rather than ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As one example, let’s take the term “common sense.” When used as a modifier it is often hyphenated, as in “common-sense ideas.” We need not be told what these ideas actually are, it’s just “common sense.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some years ago there was a big push for “smart growth” What, other than the opposite of “dumb growth” does that mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How often do newspaper headlines and articles vouch for an argument by labelling its proponent as an “expert”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of these terms are used as a shortcut by a writer telling the reader, “Just trust me.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jay Bohn<\/p>\n\n\n\n
March 23, 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a reader of political and legal rhetoric, I have noticed that often the writer of such documents will use “crutch” words, often adjectives and adverbs, in place of details and logical arguments. It becomes a battle of slogans rather than ideas. As one example, let’s take the term “common sense.” When used as a … Continue reading “Beware “Crutch” Words”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=995"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":997,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions\/997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}