> And again we have, of course, the kind of error that I always put a
> good
> deal of emphasis on in my teaching of freshman comp. UVJ starts out "a
> very large section . . .tends" to X. Again, a lot of water is dirty. On
> a lot of days there are clouds in the sky. No sentence starting out
> that
> way can say anything useful. This is one of the errors I used to come
> down heaviest on in reading freshman papers. I spent a lot of time in
> writing classes on the importance of avoiding pompous tautologies. I
> wish maillist posters would give more effort to avoid such pomposity.
So what are you looking for? Something along the lines of:
"A series of studies [footnotes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] have recently shown that 78.3%-85.7% of U.S. Leftists are thrilled by the LBO-List."
perhaps? Yes, indeed; let's all be thoroughly rigorous.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. -- Attr. to Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile