Re: Questions about marketing copy

["Lurker writer" <lurker_writer -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Well, there are rules, and then there are "rules." Marketing communications 
copy is hype-driven, sometimes replete with half-truths, and contain 
marginally subtantiated claims that legal calls "trade puffery." You can't 
apply the same rules in tech comm to the same depth in marcomm. You've got 
two different audiences,so why wouldn't your "rules" be different? You're 
appealing to a different mindset, people who think differently than the 
folks who read the tech docs; people who need to be persuaded to respond 
versus people who don't.

I've written and edited highly technical documentation and highly "puffed" 
marketing documents. But when I work with marcom, I take off my 
anal-retentive writer/editor hat.