tie-down
n.— «The Tie-Down. The “don’t you agree?” or “isn’t that so?” attached to a statement: “You can change your life, don’t you agree?” It softens the presumptuousness of a statement, and builds agreement.» —“The Pitch” Washington Post Oct. 15, 1985. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...