Using the imperative is like voicing a command.
Spare use grabs attention. Overuse slides into the dictatorial.
Add a bit of
Iraqi intransigence, subtract a bit of Russian ingenuity,
throw in a bit of UN Security Council discord, and the choice
for America would have been, broadly, acquiescence or air strikes.
Here, the writer is asking us to act. The
result: we as readers take far more note of intransigence,
ingenuity, and discord than we would in the prepositional
blur of Given the combination of Iraqi intransigence, Russian
ingenuity, and UN Security Council discord, . . . .
Trek to the
tops of mountains, the sources of rivers, the earth's icebound poles.
Never mind that these charges usually evaporate
under scrutiny: much of the software world is convinced that Microsoft
simply does not play fair.
In Europe, where banks have long had a foot in both
camps, the trading one is getting bigger: witness the unseemly
rush by Swiss and German bankers to lay their hands on medium-sized
British merchant banks with large trading outfits.
