No doubt!

There are two particular words that annoy the teeth out of me when they're placed together in a history book. Take a wild guess what they are!

All too often, these innocent words are forced into duty by unscrupulous authors to bolster their argument without anything so tawdry as 'evidence'. Take Private Demons: The Tragic Personal Life of John A. Macdonald by Patricia Phenix. (My copy is in a box, unfortunately, so my ranting is from memory.) The book does not use citations - fair enough, for quite a number of popular histories don't. They should, but they don't.

Perhaps because of this, Phenix is particularly fond of the words 'no doubt.' Through them, she can make all sorts of assertations. You know, like Macdonald chose his wives on basis of their supposed resemblance to his mother, that he was carrying on an affair with Mrs. Grimason and his second wife Agnes found it oh so difficult to maintain civility with her because of this. She doesn't even bother to off-handedly quote some diary entry or letter or what have you.

Why does this bother me so much? Because it is indicative of an author who is so in love with their notion that they absolutely must put it in their book. But evidence is missing; what to do? They simply put those two words in front of the sentence and voila, it is proven. False aura of authority attained, no citations needed.

Note that this isn't half so annoying if the author can back it up with either a citation or a relevant quotation. Nevertheless, it must be one hell of an example of either to justify 'no doubt' or 'doubtless,' for they imply that no further argument can be made. The author is right, you are wrong, suck it.

Ah, hell! Whatever. No doubt this just ticks me off because the uncertainty that forever lodged itself in my psychological make-up when I found out Santa wasn't real. That has to be it.