{"id":161,"date":"2008-03-06T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2008-03-06T18:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/maybe-theres-some-truth-to-the-fact\/"},"modified":"2008-03-07T09:03:10","modified_gmt":"2008-03-07T15:03:10","slug":"maybe-theres-some-truth-to-the-fact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/03\/maybe-theres-some-truth-to-the-fact\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Maybe there&#8217;s some truth to the fact &#8230;&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I heard Susan Estrich say this during a Fox News Channel interview a couple of days ago.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Problem:<\/strong><br \/>\nA fact by definition is <em>true<\/em>, so &#8220;some truth to the fact&#8221; makes no sense.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Explanation:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe phrase &#8220;some truth to the fact&#8221; is, unfortunately, a common English blunder.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know whether this political advisor to former President William Clinton made this blunder honestly or was using the political double-speak to which so many advisors fall prey.<\/p>\n<p>If it was an honest blunder, then I believe that it was consistent with my &#8220;Devolution toward Simpler&#8221; hypothesis. It&#8217;s simpler (Try it!) to say &#8220;fact&#8221; than to say &#8220;claim&#8221; &#8212; the correct final noun for this phrase.<\/p>\n<p>For fun, I searched Google for each of the following phrases (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;some truth to the fact&#8221; &#8212; 273,000 matches<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;some truth to the claim&#8221; &#8212; 15,200 matches<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This tells me that Web authors have written the phrase <em>incorrectly<\/em> vs. <em>correctly<\/em> by a ratio of 17.96:1, which is dreadful! (&#8220;Oh, the humanity!&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Solution:<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8220;Maybe there&#8217;s some truth to the claim &#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I heard Susan Estrich say this during a Fox News Channel interview a couple of days ago. Problem: A fact by definition is true, so &#8220;some truth to the fact&#8221; makes no sense. Explanation: The phrase &#8220;some truth to the fact&#8221; is, unfortunately, a common English blunder. I don&#8217;t know whether this political advisor to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-common-english-blunders","category-devolution-toward-simpler","category-nouns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>&quot;Maybe there&#039;s some truth to the fact ...&quot; - Kirk Mahoney . com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/03\/maybe-theres-some-truth-to-the-fact\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;Maybe there&#039;s some truth to the fact ...&quot; - Kirk Mahoney . com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I heard Susan Estrich say this during a Fox News Channel interview a couple of days ago. 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