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Re: Great piece on marketing collateral

Subject: Re: Great piece on marketing collateral
From: Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 08:47:32 -0400




Mike O. wrote:

When you

are a tech writer, every claim you write needs to be backed up with an actual fact, right in the document.


And that's the crux of the issue, it seems to me. I can parse the above sentence two ways:

1. You _are_ a tech writer (colloquial use of "when," because you are _always_ a tech writer). Therefore every claim you write needs to be backed up. Therefore you are personally conflicted when you are asked to write a document that helps sell the product.

2. Sometimes you're a tech writer; sometimes you're not. _When_ (in the literal, temporal sense) you are doing tech writing, you need to back up every claim. When you are doing marcomm, you apply the rules of _that_ genre.

It seems, in this thread, that some individuals are parsing the situation the first way and some the second. Situations like this tend to result in people talking past each other.

Personally, I'm a hack. I'll adjust my diction to the rhetorical situation at hand and write anything for anyone (with a few categorical exceptions having to do with my personal political and moral views). I've written speeches, user manuals, advertising copy (print and broadcast), systems documentation, newspaper editorials, magazine columns, community organizing guides, poetry, doggerel, book reviews, white papers, biographical essays, and a bunch of other stuff I'm prolly fergettin'. I don't have to _be_ any particular species of writer. I have to endeavor to _be_ a mensch. The rest is just what I _do_ for a living.

Dick

--
I wouldn't go into politics for any amount of money. I'm not capable of
being nice to people who annoy me.
--Lou Dobbs (CNN financial anchor), interviewed in NY Times Magazine by Deborah Solomon, 21 March 2004



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References:
Re: Great piece on marketing collateral: From: Mike O.

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