Headlines really can capture the subject of a press release without being too complicated. Hot on the heels of the University of Edinburgh's baffling press release about a centre that will do something unknown, comes an announcement from an outfit just down the road and that just happens to be about that very same seat of learning. This time the headline says it all:
MAJOR CENTRE FOR REGENERATIVE MEDICINE ANNOUNCED FOR EDINBURGH
Apart from the shouty capital letters, there's nothing to upset anyone here. Well, up to a point, the people behind this press release insist on using the label "Edinburgh Technopole" to describe what is in reality a property venture. "One hundred and twenty-six acres of rolling parkland located at the heart of a cluster of internationally recognised research institutions, provide the backdrop for up to 500,000 sq ft (46,450 sq m) of high quality buildings designed to meet the flexible needs of research and technology based companies."There's nothing wrong with universities bringing in the professionals like Grosvenor to handle their property schemes, but why not use the well recognised "science park" label?
The technopole tries to deal with this one by explaining that the idea is "to become not just a Science and Technology Park but a genuine scientific community where shared resources encourage shared ideas, engendering cross-fertilisation between different disciplines and synergy between different projects". Quite a few traditional science parks would insist that they manage to achieve this fashionable mixture of buzz words without borrowing a label invented in France.
tag: PR, press releases, science parks, writing
1 comment:
Michael, this kind of writing in press releases is called gobbledygook.
If you stopped 10 people on the street and asked them, "What does this mean?" I doubt that many of them would be able to tell you. Here's the offending phrase:
"...genuine scientific community where shared resources encourage shared ideas, engendering cross-fertilisation between different disciplines and synergy between different projects".
I can usually spot these kinds of offending sentences in an instant. They're long, and they have lots of words with multiple syllables.
Press release writing, particularly for complicated subjects, should be crisp and clear.
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