Re: LONG - A colloquial writing style?

[Ellen McDaniel <ellen -at- vidiom -dot- com>]

Bill brings up a good point.  In my mind, it goes back to audiences.  
Colloquialisms don't always translate well.  At a past company, my 
manager had used the phrase "beating a dead horse" at the end of a long 
section on file systems.  That was 12-15 years ago and I still all too 
clearly remember trying to explain the phrase to our overseas 
translators.  They were very diligent and even though I kept assuring 
them that removing the entire sentence wouldn't change the meaning of 
the paragraph, they insisted on understanding the phrase.  After several 
phone calls and email exchanges, they finally did remove it because they 
realized their audience would be more confused by it than anything else.

That said, I've seen colloquialisms used very effectively several times 
to explain abstract concepts by putting the concept into terms the 
audience can relate to.

Ellen



Bill Swallow wrote: