Q11 - Should a journalist's story begin with

[roflcoptersoisoi]

This question hasn't been asked yet. I had a hard time identifying the conclusion in this stimulus. Can someone do a quick run through this question?

[maryadkins]

Kind of tricky! I see what you mean.

Well, okay, this guy doesn't think "in a surprise development" should be used when the surprise was the journalist's, or when the surprise was someone else's, or when it was lots of people's. That doesn't leave many if any circumstances in which he thinks it SHOULD be used.

(A) isn't what he thinks. He doesn't say when it should be used.
(B) brings in if something is interesting which isn't what he says, either.
(C) isn't his point. It may be true but it's not his conclusion.
(D) Summing up? No
(E) BINGO. The only one that fits.

[gramanda]

Hi,

After reading this I'm still a bit confused. I was left with the answer choices B or E, and I chose B in the end.
This was because the premise reads "because if some person's surprise was worth mentioning at all (...)" and the last sentence "there is no point in belaboring the obvious.". From my understanding this infers that if the content is not interesting then it's not worth using the phrase "in a surprise development"?

So in the end I'm still not sure why the correct answer should be E instead of B.

[ChandlerB747]

Thanks for the discussion guys. Though I still have some lingering comments about this one.

I was going through this question and I was kinda thrown off by the word "good" in choice (E). At first glance, it seemed like a good answer choice, but the more I looked into it, the word "good" stood out. Can someone explain if I'm missing something in the stimulus, or as a general rule for LR questions?

Thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

I think you're just missing the latitude we get when we're making normative (opinionated) judgments.

The most famous normative words are "should" and "ought".

Here, we're concluding that "Journalists SHOULD NOT begin a story this way."

You will often see synonyms for should / should not that sound like
good / bad
right / wrong
justified / unjustified
wise / unwise