On the Right

IN the debate last night, Hillary Clinton pronounced herself glad that Barack Obama had brought up the subject of foreign affairs. The technique is common. It says to the audience that Clinton is aware of a deficiency in Obama and intends to exploit it for all it is worth. The danger is that it gives Obama an opportunity to turn the score on Clinton by saying that he just happens to have made his living for three years by writing on foreign affairs for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

These verbal traps are widely used and widely counter-used. The best collection of them appears in the last few pages of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, but of course that section is only a small part of his great work. It is worth acquainting the reader with the teeming harvest of Fowler’s analysis.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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IN the debate last night, Hillary Clinton pronounced herself glad that Barack Obama had brought up the subject of foreign affairs. The technique is common. It says to the audience that Clinton is aware of a deficiency in Obama and intends to exploit it for all it is worth. The danger is that it gives Obama an opportunity to turn the score on Clinton by saying that he just happens to have made his living for three years by writing on foreign affairs for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

These verbal traps are widely used and widely counter-used. The best collection of them appears in the last few pages of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, but of course that section is only a small part of his great work. It is worth acquainting the reader with the teeming harvest of Fowler’s analysis.