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This isn't about "grammatical correctness." It's about writing clearly,
using little black marks on a page (or a screen) to move an idea or a
feeling from one person's brain to another's.
Your Winston example proves that clarity doesn't require correct grammar.
The problem with the sentence fragments in the cited article isn't that
they're incorrect, but that they muddy the waters.
-- Dan Goldstein
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gene Kim-Eng
> Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2004 12:54 PM
> To: DGoldstein -at- DeusTech -dot- com; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
> Subject: RE: RE: Great piece on marketing collateral
>
> I abandoned the idea of "grammatical correctness" as
> an essential characteristic of "well-written" the
> first time I heard "Winston tastes good like a
> cigarette should." A "well-written" article makes
> its point to its target audience, and in the case of
> this one, I don't think its target was "writers," but
> rather, "Marcomm people who spend too much of their time
> writing." The article's primary message to these
> Marcomm readers was, "People don't read your marketing
> documents any more than they do the technical ones, so
> stop writing them." The last thing he wants to do is
> follow writing rules while he's telling his readers to
> throw their current ones out the window.
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