A very long time ago, in 1966, while in the U.S. Navy, I bought a 1962 Honda Superhawk. At some point it needed work, so I ordered the shop manual.
I was 20 at the time, helping to run the base newspaper at the Naval Air Facility in El Centro, CA. I wasn't an editor as such but nevertheless typos and other grammatical issues grated on me. And that shop manual was full of broken English. At first I found it amusing, and then I wondered, couldn't Honda afford someone to competently translate the manual from Japanese?
Next, I wondered whether the Japanese-language manual was poorly written. I assumed it was written properly. After all, who would want to be embarrassed in their native language? Apparently, however, they figured there was no problem with being embarrassed in some other language.
Fast forward several decades and we find product text, such as on Amazon and in user manuals, continues to suffer. Chinese electronics manufacturers and distributors seem to be egregiously guilty of deploying bad English. They don't seem to care about getting it right, and therefore come across as sloppy. Who wants to have their corporate reputation damaged because of heedlessness?

Folks, if you’re a fan of this blog, then you know how much I love great writing. Well, this is the ultimate obituary, Read More...
This morning I got a call from an angry man. He said he paid us $7,000, nobody’s been answering the phone and he demanded to Read More...
This is an email conversation between me and one of my writers. I assigned him a screenplay client. And this writer is a recent Read More...
Ever since this business was launched way back in 2002, record keeping, client info, writer info, project assignments and Read More...
We are in the process of making several informative and useful (and hopefully a bit witty) videos on the things we do here. Read More...
One concern a prospective client has is whether the writer they are considering hiring is an honorable person. The concern Read More...
So today I played a black and white movie I recorded from Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscar. It was Somebody Up There Likes Read More...
Found in today’s Los Angeles Times. Who knew? Certainly not I. Apparently there is something called the Plain Writing Act and it Read More...
