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Paul Hanson <PHanson -at- Quintrex -dot- com wrote:
>Innocent question:
>Why is it okay for marketing copy to have <snip> inconsistency of tense,
>gross overuse of passive voice, unnecessarily large words, technical
>jargon, sentences that should be broken into *paragraphs*, and stressing
>the unimportant details over the major improvements <snip>
>
>Seeing all this, regardless of the audience, would drive me nuts!
It has been my experience that marketing pieces, particularly for new releases
of existing software products, stress the bells and whistles, especially the
new bells and whistles, while overlooking the "real" improvements. I don't
know if this is because marketing pieces are written to attract new clients,
figuring the existing ones will automatically upgrade, or if it's just a sales
thing.
What I, as a technical writer, consider <snip> inconsistency of tense,
>gross overuse of passive voice, unnecessarily large words, technical
>jargon, sentences that should be broken into *paragraphs*, and stressing
>the unimportant details over the major improvements <snip> is often perfectly
acceptable in a marketing piece. They write different than we do, they have a
different audience, and I'm assuming that they know that audience.
