Grammar Girl here.

I'm Vinyan Fogarty and this week I have a tip to help you identify straw man arguments.

A meeting middle about why we pronounce the ED the way we do at the ends of words like

wicked and naked.

And some fun listener stories at the end.

Let's get started.

Political ads and analysis are reaching a fever pitch, so it seems like a good time to

talk about the phrase straw man.

What does it mean when two people are debating and one accuses the other of putting forth

a straw man argument?

I always think of the straw man from the Wizard of Oz, but that's not the real origin.

In its simplest definition, straw man is the name of a logical fallacy, which means

that if you carefully dissect the argument or statement, it doesn't make sense.

It's a way of misrepresenting your opponent's position.

It's as if you took a flaming scarecrow, threw it onto the debate floor, you'll look,

it's my opponent's dangerous straw man, and then you appeared to save the day by

dousing the flames with water.

Oh, while your opponent mungers, that's not my scarecrow.

Where did that come from?

It can be annoyingly effective because in response, you may be lured into clarifying what

your position is not, instead of talking about what your position is.

And studies have shown that when you repeat a lie, even if you're repeating it to refute

...