atw: Re: Friday: "Better to look wrong than to be wrong"

Stuart has raised a very important issue. Corporations, especially 
multinationals, spend considerable sums of money on branding. They are 
therefore very sensitive about their branding image. Here are some observations 
made when I was employed by two such organizations.

One has a 60+ page manual describing how to use its logo in every conceivable 
situation, including colors, position, backgound, and so on. The style 
guidelines was a separate document. I saw an internal email from one of the 
corporate lawyers stating that those people reproducing the logo out of text 
symbols for email signatures must immediately cease and desist.

The other has a carefully out-of-true logo. The Marcom manager sent an image 
file out to a contractor be included with some work he was doing. Imagine her 
reaction when the work was returned with the logo "corrected". 

When I contracted I made sure I viewed any available guidelines on the use of 
the company logo and styles. One company asked me to modify an existing product 
brochure for a new product. I had to ask for guidance because the white space 
around the logo in the existing brochure did not conform to the guidelines (I 
was instructed to put in as much whitespace as I could).

The golden rule is "Never mess with the corporate image". Rules have no 
exceptions. Unless you own the company.  

Jonathan Moffett


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Stuart Burnfield <sburnf@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date:  Fri, 2 Dec 2005 08:23:36 +0800

>This is from The Chicago Manual of Style Q & A page
>(http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/cmosfaq.html):
>
>Q. I am editing an article in which two organizations are named.
>Each has the word "roundtable" in its name, but one is Round Table
>and the other is Roundtable. Should I leave the spellings as they
>are (and risk looking like I have made a mistake) or "nudge" the
>one into a single word?
>
>A. Alas, copy editors don't have the authority to change the
>names of organizations. In this case, as is often true in life,
>it's better to look wrong than to be wrong.
>
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