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Message:: [QUOTE="DonnaML, post: 4864579, member: 110350"]Personally, as someone who wrote for a living for almost 40 years as a litigating attorney whose job was to persuade the reader, I think that if anything detracts from the argument, it's not the rhetoric itself, or the substance of the argument, but the way it's presented.  The final sentence presenting the basis for the conclusion is almost nine lines long, with multiple clauses, sub-clauses, parentheticals, etc. It could easily, and should, have been separated into at least three shorter sentences. The length makes the argument difficult to follow -- as does the separation of the opening "The fact that . . " from the verb "provides" by using "combined with," "in accordance with," "and," "which," "being," and "and," followed by another "which," "both," "and," and "and." I know how easy it is to get distracted by the flow of an argument as one writes it, but if I had ever submitted a sentence like that in a draft brief to my boss, he probably would have thrown it back at me! That said, I trust Barry Murphy and David Vagi, who are clearly among the most noted experts on ancient coins in the world.  Barring disagreement by one of the handful of people with the same level of expertise, I can't imagine doubting their conclusion.[/QUOTE]