Comments on: The Problem of Voice: On Paul Graham, Press Releases, and More

By: Jaime Cardoso

Jaime Cardoso — Mon, 09 May 2005 19:52:39 +0000

Well, PR papers usually more formal so, they don’t have a lot of cultural references.
If you read Greg Papadopolous weblog, you’ll find some reference do the Red Sox (for example) well, like most people in the world, I can imagine them being an baseball or football team and, I can take they won something when the odds were against them but, that was just interpretation of the example given, that example was not clear to me, blogs are full of stuff like that.
Notice that I’m not saying blogs aren’t usefull, they are, very but, I see no reason for droping everything else.

By: sogrady

sogrady — Mon, 09 May 2005 17:00:13 +0000

Christopher: i think in theory you’re correct; a house style need not detract from the overall content quality. i think in many cases, however, they do - particularly when contrasted against the individuality of blogs. basically i think it comes down to the appeal of a particular house style. if it’s like the Reg and people like it, knock yourself out. if it’s like press releases or even AP stories, and distances the reader, i’m not sure how well it plays. either way, they’re not going away.

Fraxas: we’re fully aligned on the some-consistency-is-good meme, i think. i think where we may differ a bit is in just how often the house style “runs amok.” my contention is that it’s really, really common.

Jaime: nice use of the binary meme on your second point, i’d push back a bit. granted, if everybody’s all over the place you might have some trouble, but for those speaking english as a second language, are blogs really harder to read/digest than press releases? if so, i guess you’re right, but i’d tend to think blogs are more readable. and as far as Sun PRESENTations go, they’re actually all in PDF, b/c the folks forget i use OO.o

thanks also for the words on the move; things are indeed much calmer now.

By: Jaime Cardoso

Jaime Cardoso — Sun, 08 May 2005 01:48:49 +0000

Hello Stephen.
I thing PR documents are still important for many people, if nothing else, it’s the oficial position of the company on some subject. It’s not binary in one or the other, both have it’s place and I give use to both.

Second, I think consistency is important, inside an document and inside a company. It makes understanding a lot easier, expecially if you’re not English speaking native.

Finally, I sure expect you stoped receiving “Powerpoints” from Sun. I hope Sun only send PRESENTations to you
PS. Hope things are calmer now, after the move

By: Fraxas

Fraxas — Sat, 07 May 2005 19:01:50 +0000

It’s like any business process.

There are good reasons to have processes and standard ways of doing things, for consistency’s sake. After all, it’s hard to aggregate information from multiple sources inside a company if everyone uses a different word processor, etc etc.

The problem comes when processes get overcodified and inflexible in the face of the actual work that has to get done. That’s when House Style runs amok.

I bet you wouldn’t actually notice if two IBM (or MS or Sun) presentations came in with slightly different fonts in their main bodies, as long as the presentations were consistent with themselves. That’s the kind of consistency that’s important.

By: Christopher Baus

Christopher Baus — Sat, 07 May 2005 00:22:18 +0000

I’m not certain if a “house style” detracts from a journal or blog. For instance the commercial blog, SFist http://sfist.com/ , has a “house style” that uses the “royal we” voice. At first I thought this was really odd for a blog, but it has since become one of my favorites.

The Register is sort of same thing as you mention.

Although I totally agree that the marketing droidisms do nothing for me.