atw: Re: Hi All:

<Chuckles> Deb's reply was spot on, and the quotes ideal.

To be fair, even Australians often find my style arrogant, rude and
personal. Americans even more so as they are not used to it at all. I am
sure you could, with a small stretch of the imagination, interpret this
message as 'offensively direct'. I call it being blunt :-)

Now, you are missing three more pieces of context. The site owner is an
Aussie and wrote most of that to be funny as well. My work gets peer
reviewed by Americans and Germans mainly. The yanks have a problem with the
language, the Germans don't. So my mate, the site owner, John McGhie of
Bondi Junction, Sydney Australia, knows damn well that seppos will usually
find it disconcerting at the least. He has been cc'd to ensure he receives
the feedback :-)

I think deep down there is a touch of racial pride in there as well :-)
"He's an Aussie, so am I, so if you don't like it, NAFF OFF!" :-)

The second piece of context is that one of my target audiences was
Microsoft's developers on the Word / Office product teams. I was stoked to
find out I succeeded and indeed these folk have not only read my article, it
is actively being used as input for development efforts by management. If
they want to complain about the style or anything, they are warned that I
will not hesitate to double-load by double-barrelled shotty of MS grief and
give em all four charges in the face :-)

The third piece of context is I am sure that most of my regular readers will
agree that this warning wasn't THAT over the top from the POV of what you
get as a reply from me <stitch to cockroach thread>. Effectively, it's a
very thorough "Warning - this dog bites" on the gate to Steve's house ;-)

Steve Hudson

Word Heretic, Sydney, Australia 
Tricky stuff with Word or words for you.
www.wordheretic.com
ABN: 86 453 419 554   
"Qualified Good Tech Writer Dude"
Fellowship of the Ring of Technical Writers, Yeah Baby!
Without prejudice


-----Original Message-----
From: Garry Stevens

Hi All:

Took a look at the MVP Word site after a lapse of many months and found Mr =
Hudson's tract on task panes. What I found quite astonishing was the length=
y preamble by the site owner, in effect warning against offensive language.=
Having glanced through this quite technical document, I found the language=
perfectly fine.

I continued to boggle when the site owner continued by warning those offend=
ed (by what? VBA?) againnst emailing let they receive a salty reply. And to=
top it off the owner begs indulgence for Mr Hudson by saying he's an Austr=
alian!

What on earth could offend Americans (I presume the site is American) so mu=
ch?

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