However, the main reason I refer to home mortgage rates is to make my point as concrete and tangible as possible. I think you need to touch the reader s everyday concerns. Then you can go on to show how issues that appear more distant and abstract are relevant to the reader and how they can have a real impact If they choose to act. You refer to gunboat diplomacy and starvation wages . You only apply this kind of catch-phrase to your opponents.
All writers use catch-phrases emotive words and rhetoric that grabs the readers attention.
Phrases like gunboat diplomacy are also a sort of shorthand which is fine so long as the meaning is clear. I also believe that, particularly in the nuclear debate, there is a place for very direct language. Much of the doublespeak used by military strategists and some politicians is obscene and dangerous.