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Comment by sbuttgereit | Hacker News Reader

The very first sentence in your article is:

"It began in ancient Rome."

It's not there as a quote, it's not there as "it was claimed to begin in ancient Rome". It's just the simple assertion: "It began in ancient Rome."

If you didn't really mean to assert that statement or suggest that it's true, then, frankly, you've written that pretty poorly.

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Yes it did begin in ancient Rome. I beg to differ in the poorly written part. I think it's more a misunderstanding of what the argument is. Or better said, what "it" is. Because it did start in ancient Rome. The link started there. At no point does the article argue the Romans used this salute. It's also not the core argument the article makes, that's the link with Hitler

From your own original comment to which I replied:

"but I never stated this was actually used in ancient Rome."

Now you're saying:

"Yes it did begin in ancient Rome." which the article expressly started with as well.

What are you actually asserting?

>It began in ancient Rome. Mussolini adopted it. Hitler copied it, and then lied about where it came from.

>The Nazi salute.

As an opening paragraph to a topic that you're about to educate/clarify your audience on, maybe using a generic word to describe what your article goes into depth is a poor way of going about.. it.

Thanks you for reading it! And yes, my audience gets what 'it' means!

You don't have to argue. You are saying it.

It's not a misunderstanding from readers part. If you write "is started in ancient Rome" and think it does not imply that Romans used it, you have problems in writing.

"It" does not imply that the Romans used it, in the context of the article and analysis that is about WWII (and not ancient Rome). Reading and writing an article doesn't stop at the first sentence you encounter.

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