Inspired by true events is a tag line appearing in some new films. This slogan replaced the previous antiquated version: Based on a true story. It is also complete nonsense, because all films, indeed all art, is “inspired” by true events, because all art is inspiration from actual life.

This is a classic example of marketers taking a perfectly good piece of text and ruining it with meaningless gray words so as not to offend anyone. I enjoy fictional works as much as anyone, but please don’t mix my fact and fiction. I would rather see a documentary than an artistic film claiming to be “inspired by true events”, because in a documentary, I’d assume everything I see actually happened. In the “inspired” film, I wouldn’t be so sure.

There are writers, and then there are technical writers, and never the ‘twain shall meet. Technical writing is as different from fictional writing as house painting is from artistic painting. Writing a novel does not qualify a person to be a technical writer. It only qualifies them to be a story-teller.

We don’t tell stories. We don’t spin yarns or tell tales. We explain the facts; the what, where, when, why and how. We don’t get into feelings or characters. We remain cool and unemotional in our work. You may try to change us to novelists and ad men, but you will fail.

We are logical. We battle confusion and uncertainty.

We are Vulcan. We are the Borg.

Resistance is futile.