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Your Marcom person is on another planet. Bad copy is bad copy, whether it's
marketing or technical communications.
With any form of professional communications, you must know the rules before
you know when and how to break them to achieve the goal.
No matter what anyone tells you, THE SAME RULES APPLY: Know your audience,
understand your product, have a goal, and communicate accordingly.
I have a degree in marketing, wrote ad copy and PR for 12 years before I
moved to tech writing and UI design. I do both with ease, because I
understand the differences between both, and because I understand the
similarities. So there are the credentials that I stand on when I make this
claim.
Winzip isn't a word yet .... email, computer, and even aspirin weren't words
at some point. Whether words are real words actually has nothing to do
with whether good marcom follows "the rules".
The copy should be rewritten, not because it doesn't or doesn't follow some
defined set of rules, but just because it's really bad.
My less than humble opinion
Connie Giordano
-----Original Message-----
From: Cindy Parker [mailto:cparker -at- fuse -dot- net]
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2001 11:50 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Questions about marketing copy
As a Technical Writer, I tend to be very "rules-oriented" when it comes to
professional copy I write, manuals, web content, and even the marketing copy
I write. My question is, do the same rules apply for marketing copy as with
other written documents? I know the answer is probably, it depends but I'm
not sure I buy that answer.
[snip]
The debate between myself and another
writer is that with Marcum, the rules don't apply. The example I was given
is that "WINZIP" isn't a word and it's perfectly fine. I see a major
difference between "WINZIP" and fragments etc.
Any thoughts? I can't wait to see the debate on this one.
Regards,
Cindy Parker
Information Engineer, Online Architecture
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