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Old 07-09-2012, 10:01 AM   #5
Elfwreck
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Quote:
Originally Posted by VydorScope View Post
I am reading some documentation from a vendor that is trying to do business with us. Top give you an idea of the intend audience for this document, I work at a university with 95k students. This vendor is trying to get in to do business with us. In their docs they have jewels like:
<snip>
I've seen plenty like this; it comes from the contract being handed around among marketing execs who have no experience in technical writing (hence the ridiculous explanations for things like data import) and who re-write and edit, sometimes with Track Changes on in Word, and so miss doubled words and other atrocious grammar problems.

And then, of course, it doesn't get proofed before being sent off, because nobody in the marketing department is a designated proofreader, and the people in the documents department (1) are busy on other things and (2) aren't supposed to see docs they're not cleared for. Also, when something *is* handed to them, they're often not given instructions--they're told "format this according to our styleguide," and not "check for errors." Or they're told to check for ALL errors, including facts, and they have no idea whether the turnaround times are accurate or if that chart copied from the 1998 sales report is useful, so they shrug, fix the margins, and PDF the thing without looking at the text.

It's not that the people writing the proposal are illiterate; it's that it's written by committee, spread out over some time, and never read through as a final document before being sent off to a client.

Sending it back full of proofreader's marks could be an entertaining exercise, if you've got anyone who wants to burn the time on it.
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