gas

YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY POMEGRANATE

In a recent post, I talked about organizations that believe their preferred way of doing things represented the industry standards.  In a similar vein, I’ve done work for companies that have their own lexicons — even style guides spelling out exactly how things should be worded.

For example, I used to do a lot of work for some divisions of Amoco Oil (since absorbed by BP). Among the no-nos in their style guide was that you couldn’t refer to their primary product as gas. Even though the average  consumer may say, “I need to buy gas” and go to the gas station to pump ten gallons of gas into his gas tank, any materials produced by Amoco were required to reference “gasoline.”

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