Inquirer Takes on Bad Business Writing
By Joe Ferry on Aug 12, 2008 in Editorial Services, Marketing Communications | comments(0)
Interesting story on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer today about bad business writing. Although I’m not sure exactly what made Stacey Burling’s piece worthy of such prime real estate (it wasn’t exactly a slow news day what with Russia invading George and the Olympics in full swing), it did bring a warm feeling to this writer’s heart.
What especially caught my attention was a quote from Rick Sherman, an Austin, Texas marketing consultant who defended his authorship of this description of his company: “[We’re] a market-leading provider of technology-enabled process-optimization tools to reduce and right-size inventory, improve forecast accuracy and service, optimize production resources, and reduce cycle time across the supply chain.â€
Boiled down to its essence, the company makes money for its clients by making them more efficient. Of course, that’s not sexy enough for upper management, so Sherman penned his wordy, obtuse, self-important sounding passage. And, as Burling reported, he was more than happy to stand behind his work by arguing his target readers were supply-chain managers and trade-press writers, not reporters for daily newspapers. As if that audience is somehow genetically predisposed to prefer vague, unnecessarily complicated writing.
“It is not our strategic intent for you to understand,†he told Burling.
Sherman also defended the passage by saying it was purposely wordy to allow for as many key Internet search words as possible.
Kudos to Sherman for at least grasping the concept of writing for your audience and his rudimentary knowledge of Search Engine Optimization. But major jeers for thinking that you can sacrifice clarity in favor of keywords.
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