Re: Industry jargon OK in marketing docs?

[Chris Morton <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Can you provide a more complete contextual reference, Julie?

As you wrote herein, "contractor spend" makes absolutely no sense to me even
as (so-called) jargon. If I saw it in a marketing piece, I'd consider the
company to inattentive to detail and would not think very highly of them. If
I sensed it was a deliberate move, I might even boycott whatever it is
they're selling merely for the further adulteration of our language.

> Chris

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Julie Stickler <jstickler -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:

> While I'm out of work I'm doing some contracting for previous
> employers.  Last week I formatted some marketing docs for the place
> that I used to work a year ago.  The text had already gone through
> several edits (that I wasn't involved in) so since I was mostly hired
> to format it in InDesign and generate a PDF, I only fixed one glaring
> error, changing "contractor spend" to "contractor spending."
>
> Today I recieved an e-mail asking for the following "Change “spending”
> back to “spend” for phrases like “contractor spend.” This is industry
> jargon."
>
> Arggghhhh!  I was always taught to remove jargon from my docs.  But
> then I have done mostly software manuals and help, I haven't had much
> experience writing marketing documents.  One the one hand I'm thinking
> that since I'm contracting, the customer is always right.  If that's
> what they want, that's what I should give them.  On the other hand,
> gramatically incorrect jargon makes me cringe.
>
> So I ask you, TECH-Wrlers, do you include industry jargon in your
> marketing docs?
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
> Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
> 2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
> http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
>
> Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
> authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
> once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control!
> http://www.helpandmanual.com/
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

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