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Pleasant is put for unpleasant because the latter seemed dull and unnecessary; the writer should have taken the hint, and put nothing at all.

The climax is reached by those pessimists who, regarding the reader's case as desperate, assist him with punctuation, italics, and the like:

c. Superlatives without the.

The omission of the with superlatives is limited by ordinary prose usage to (1) Superlatives after a possessive: 'Your best plan'. (2) Superlatives with most: 'in most distressing circumstances', but not 'in saddest circumstances'. (3) Superlatives in apposition, followed by of: "I took refuge with X., kindliest of hosts'; 'We are now at Weymouth, dingiest of decayed watering-places'. Many writers of the present day affect the omission of the in all cases where