Quote:
Originally Posted by brian
If a marketer can do it, the marketer will do it.
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Actually, it's journalists (rather, bad journalists) that are guilty of making up facts by using the word "may."
If you don't feel like doing the research, just watch How To Get Ahead In Advertising, where an ad exec points this very scenario out. Adding the word "may" changes an opinion about something or someone without any actual information being proven.
For instance, using the sentence, "When discs supporting BD-Live are played back, the player or disc IDs may be sent to the content provider via the Internet."
I can change this to "When discs supporting BD-Live are played back, the player or disc IDs may be eaten by cookie monster."
And I could print this in a newspaper, because I don't need to prove it. The word may suggests it's a possibility - but to a reader, it's a probability.
And there plenty of people on the internet gullible enough to believe that cookie monster would actually follow through with this.
BTW, marketing people use the word "virtually", not "may."