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Subject:RE: Examples of Poor Web page writing From:Jan Cohen <najnehoc -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:Lauren <lt34 -at- csus -dot- edu>, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Sat, 18 Aug 2007 09:47:19 -0700 (PDT)
Lauren <lt34 -at- csus -dot- edu> wrote in part: They couldn't find one person to edit this site and prevent sentences like, "The CEO program has being a boon to the younger generation and have being successful in leaving deep impact in their hearts and mind"? There's, like, 5 errors in that one sentence, at least. I'll bet they had editors, but the editors ran away, screaming into the night.
My comments:
The written content on ASUStek's websites used to be a lot worse a few years back, a trend that seemed to be shared by a number of overseas manufacturers, especially those based in Asia. It's possible that as business grew during the last tens years or so for companies like ASUStek, so did funding to cover overhead items like web sites and user manuals. It could be ASUStek hasn't gotten to fixing this particular subset of their web infrastructure yet, but there are grammatical inconsistencies in their newer pages also. Not nearly as bad as on the page in question though.
I probably also ought to make mention of the fact that their user manuals used to be just as bad. I've been using their products since 2000 or so, and during that course of time, their manuals have greatly improved.
ASUSTek is one of the largest manufacturers of computer hardware in the world, and is based in Taiwan. According to one of their web pages (http://www.asus.com/aboutasus.aspx?show=1), they employ more than 100,000 people, and did US$16.5 billion in business in 2006. But like the written content they used to produce, I suspect the author of the web page in question is native to a country where English is at best a second language. Not that that's generally a bad thing, mind you. ASUStek just should have found someone who was better at it.
jan cohen
> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+lt34=csus -dot- edu -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+lt34=csus -dot- edu -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
> Behalf Of Jan Cohen
> Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 10:23 PM
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: RE: Examples of Poor Web page writing
>
> >From a structural standpoint, you don't have to look far to
> come up with web sites that look like they haven't been
> updated since 1995. I think Scott's more interested in
> poorly written content though. Here's one that fits that bill:
>
>http://www.asusceo.in/
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