[USMA:23413] Recent postings

[Harry Wyeth]

There was a recent message regarding proper argumentation (I think that is a word, not just a Bush-ism), commenting that use of capital letters and exclamation marks is not useful.

Amen! I am a lawyer, and learned decades ago that the more often adjectives ("obviously", "clearly", and the like) are used in a legal brief, the weaker the real argument is likely to be. The same can be said, in spades, about capital letters and excessive punctuation.

Also, I was in Spain recently, and while shopping at a supermercado, I noticed that there were very few items packaged in oddball sizes (not even 100 or 50 g). Cans of fruit and the like appeared to me to be the same sizes as are found in the US, but always in even sizes in terms of content weight. The Euro is sure a nice thing, and I really can't understand why Britain has not come around to this. Neither can the Spanish people I spoke to. A British businessman I talked to told me that he believed that it was just a matter of time, and that within five years the Euro will be the norm in England.

HARRY WYETH