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--- Elizabeth Estep <EEstep -at- mrisystem -dot- com> wrote:
> There's an interesting subject that's just come up in my
> department--whether
> it's appropriate for a departmental editor to attempt to
> enforce a
> "departmental voice" in edits.
your situation is very like ours, only we're 5 writers and no
editor.
We don't "enforce" a departmental style, to the extent that we
have boilerplate text that is used ever time a given topic comes
up. But we all do use basic "best practices" for our writing
style: avoid passive voice, be direct and impersonal, stuff like
that... I'm sure I could come up with a better list if I gave it
more than 30 seconds thought.
So, our stuff is quietly individual, but reads like it comes
from the same company. I don't think that any normal user would
read documents written by each of us and say that they came from
different hands.
On the other hand, I don't think that the standard user would
care, in general, as long as the information presented was
lucid, complete, and correct.
sounds to me like there's more than just a style issue going on
in your department.
There's no such thing as useless information, only information for which you haven't found a use yet.
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