Word: uses
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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This article is designed to explain how to achieve the third answer to this perplexing problem by the use of the vague generality, the artful equivocation, and the overpowering assumption...
There is a third method of dealing with examination questions-that is by use of the overpowering assumption, an assumption so cosmic that it is sometimes accepted. For example, we wrote that it is pretty obvious that the vague generality is the key device in any discussion of examination writing. Why is it so obvious? As a matter of fact, it isn't so obvious, but rather just an arbitrary point from which to start. That is an example of an unwarranted assumption...
Guilty Operator. Other promising targets for attack include post offices that use computerized mail sorters and telephone operators who insist that customers place their own long-distance calls with a computerized dialing code. Matusow advises pasting stamps on sideways so that the scanner cannot read the magnetized strips that differentiate between values of stamps. In persuading telephone operators to handle calls personally, he suggests saying: "I'm sorry, operator, but I'm blind and do need your assistance." That ploy "is bound to make her feel extremely guilty, and will make it easier for the next caller...
...destroyed by fire a few years later. In restoring it, his brother added four additional domes, creating the distinctive five-dome arrangement that was widely copied throughout Russia. In 1475, Ivan the Great found the white stone structure so beautiful that he instructed the Italian architect Fiorovanti to use it as the model for Moscow's Cathedral of the Assumption in the Kremlin...
Gordon Metcalf of Sears, Roebuck complains that retail-sales figures, which store chains use to plan inventories and sales-promotion policies, are especially slippery. "For instance," he says, "on April 11, retail sales for March were announced as $29.58 billion, a record and a substantial increase over February. On May 5, the March figure was revised to $28.92 billion, a decrease rather than an increase from February...