It is the job of PR (public relations) people to competently present clients to the public, especially the narrow niche of public that writes vociferously. Yesterday, two pr oopsies landed in my email inbox.
At times a desperate pr person asks to "recall" a press release due to an error. This is the first time I have seen a double recall:
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:50:56 Release and image are attached. Call or e-mail with questions.
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:07:23 Please disregard the release sent earlier… It has a typo.
one is correct.
Other times, the email will contain chatter between pr people, chatter that someone forgot to erase. Yesterday, however, was the first time a pr person left markups turned on. Those of us who received the DOCX document could see clearly how sentences and words were tuned, moved, and removed.
I'd love to post a screengrab, but it would reveal the sender, and I wouldn't want to embarrass them.
When asked, I always recommend to pr people that they place the text of the press release in the body of the email. The reason is that then I can easily find it again in my email archives, something that's much harder with attachments.
But now I have a second reason to give those who ask: copy'n pasting eliminates the embarrassment of revealed markups.
