S. reviews Austin's (1957: 'A plea for excuses') thesis 'no modification without aberration', which means that expressions such as 'voluntarily' and 'intentionally', used to modify descriptions of actions, can only be used if these actions are in some sense aberrant. S. reformulates Austin's slogan as 'no remark without remarkableness' which can be regarded as a basic condition on assertions: it is not relevant to say about an action that it was done voluntarily unless one assumes that it could have been different.