In technical writing or business writing, many facts and statements are often backed up by peer reviewed material. These articles, journals, or statements which are peer reviewed have more validity because the information has been reasonability evaluated by other professionals with knowledge in that particular area being discussed. However, when it comes to the internet or using online resources, what is fiction and what is fact?

Beyond online webpage claims, another source of information that I often scrutinize is that of testimonials, sales pitches, commercial statements, and infomercials. I have learned over the years through various sources, mentors, and my own mistakes that you need to listen not to only what is being said, but what is not being said. Often the details that are purposely left out are, in almost all instances, are the key to someone’s success! Of course, this is always the truth when you are presented with and Opportunity of a Lifetime!

For example, the network marketing or multilevel marketing (MLM) and the infomercial industries uses these misinformation tactics often. You will often be presented a, get rich quick or buy real-estate for no money down and make huge profits; a diet supplement that melts the weight away without changing your diet, or my personal favorite, any statement that says I made huge profits in my first 30 days with no training.

Let’s breakdown a few of these statements you often are presented with as a means to share with you this concept of the backstory. Sure you can buy a home with no money down; but what this statement purposely leaves out is you need outstanding credit or significant equity assets to put up as collateral “in lieu of” cash down! That’s the back story no one seems to mention.

What about those amazing diet pills? Sure they may or may not work to some degree even if you don’t change your diet. But again, what is left out of this statement? How about the fact that to “maximize the effectiveness” of the diet pill, even the instructions on the bottle will tell you to combine this with an exercise routine several time per week. So is it the exercise or the diet pill? Watch any infomercial and you will notice they will casually, often intermix in another statement the exercise part, but it will be quietly added into the 30 minuet pitch focused on the product itself.

Not to my personal favorite. The claims made by those people who starting out in a get rich quick program and having almost instant and amazing success! If you do a little digging, what you will find in almost all instances are these individuals may have had rapid success only because their backstory was they had previous knowledge or resources which contributed almost exclusively to their success. Sure they may have just joined a new multilevel marketing program, that’s true! But what they fail to mention is they spent the last 20 plus years in this industry and have build up a significant downline or large marketing team behind them to get this success.

My point for this post is to start discussing these back story topics, both what other people say and are not saying; but also use this backstory idea to keep myself in check with presenting you, my readers with accurate information. I may not always know exactly what the strategies or mechanisms contributed to all of my successes or failures but I will be sure to point out the backstory process that lead to these topics I’ll discuss on this web log.

Needless to say, none of these options are proper synonyms for the word, Information. You can access the MS Word Thesaurus by selecting the Review Tab, then locating the Thesaurus option under the Proofing block. Spelling and Grammar checking, Research, and Translate also fall into the Proofing category and are selectable in this section. Or you can (as I do) use the shortcut key, Shift + F7 after selecting the word you want synonyms for. I attempted to Google the phrase “Report Microsoft Word Bug” but I just found a number of compliant forums. My only hope is some Microsoft employee or software coder sees this post and takes action. Not that its ground breaking, just odd senses my older computer running Microsoft XP and an older version of Microsoft Word 2003, thesaurus displays the same error synonyms for the word, Information. You would think a decade of development work on Microsoft’s part would have caught and corrected this thesaurus error for a very commonly used word as “Information”.