(Arts & Ideas, March 7): Neo-Confederate partisans of decentralized authority overlook several salient elements in this history.

Its salient elements come from nowhere and proceed no further.

Two of most salient elements of party directed mediation generally are:

Gaddis argues that three salient elements of President Bush's security strategy - pre-emption, unilateralism and hegemony - have deep roots in America's history.

This method cannot be applied on machine in which non salient element have unbalanced windings.

"Isolating the most salient elements of the subject, the Native carvers produced a statement of profound power."

(A salient everyday element of the show, however, is the fact that Walt's teacher's salary has not enabled him to insure his family's welfare after he's gone.)

But its shape will be its most salient element.

Here, the background is a classification, specific to the data, used to distinguish salient elements from the foreground.

The salient elements of the discussion can be summarised as follows.