"The Bottom Line" is an opinion which makes a claim stating the correct uses of tobacco settlement money. The money should be spent on smoking related health care and prevention, according to the claim. In order to support his claim the writer resorts mostly to using assumptions.The title of the article gives the first assumption made by the writer. The catch phrase used for the title, "The Bottom Line", is immediately at work trying to convince the reader that whatever the content of the article, it is the truth. The writer smartly tries to set this tone even before the reader begins reading the first sentence of the piece. The statements made by the writer might contain no truth at all. The reason for this tactic is simple. The phrase "bottom line" is a popular catch phrase with universal meaning. Anyone in our society would expect to get the truth whenever they receive a bottom line statement, regardless if it is from their physician or a used car salesman. When accountants determine the profits and margins of a business, we consider this to be the bottom line. In this case, just a couple of sets of numbers, even if distilled from perhaps millions pieces of data, is held to be a fundamental universal truth for rating the performance of a business. The writer is trying to quickly connect this article, by means of its title, to this presumption he hopes many of its readers hold. When the writer of the editorial reveals what he believes the correct answer for the issue about to be presented is, another assumption is immediately made. The first sentence of the first paragraph begins with "The bottom line in the question…". The phrase "the bottom line" is implied to constitute the same meaning as the word answer. I do not see the reason why, in most cases, anyone should believe this. When tackling a question of any sort, would a person be looking for a bottom line to be the answer for a question? The phrase "bottom line" and the...
