Sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities Michael, but some of us actually care about web standards. Obviously, confusing Google AdWords is no big deal, but invalid or just plain bad HTML can render your emails unreadable in lesser email clients. This commenter from earlier today agrees with me.

For the record, it appears that the horrid HTML guilty for tripping up Google AdWords was:

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><?xml:namespace 
prefix = o /><o:p><FONT face=Calibri color=#000000 size=3>&nbsp;
</FONT></o:p></P>

Looks like it's HTML generated straight out of Microsoft Word 2007. Whether it's this example, or David All's love for using H1 tags in the body of his blog posts, little but important details are what separate the superior Democrats from the inferior Republicans. Yes, its picky and somewhat geeky for me to point out, but picky and geeky is exactly what's needed when it comes to web technology.

in my inbox. The latest email from each of the big 4 campaigns.

Luigi and I traded e-mail earlier on this. He even indicated that the messages prior to the one he posted had all been fine as well. So his example of our "inferior" online ability is apparently limited to one bad e-mail with one errant Microsoft generated tag.

I suggested that his post might have better served the online community if he had pointed out that one Microsoft tag can screw up GMail instead of trying to score some cheap political point.

So it does look like it was anomaly that both Thompson's and Romney's emails had the same Gmail issue at the same time I checked them (it was so odd not seeing Google Ads that I took notice). I've happily reported it.

But I'm at least glad that this little tiff will bring light to TechPresident's readers the issue of how difficult it is to get HTML email to render properly in all possible environments. For the smaller campaigns and organizations out there that can't afford the expertise of the likes of Mssrs. Turk and Ruffini, the email service Campaign Monitor has a great resource of free-to-use email templates that have been tested in the assorted email clients out there. Outlook 2007 is a particular headache. Hopefully someone out there finds it useful.

Now back to figuring out what I'm going to do with GrandpaFred.com... ;-)

I will give Microsoft credit. Office 2007 really did attempt to clean up a lot of the crap that MSHTML (my shorthand for their substandard version of the language) generates.

There are also a few good plugins for WYSIWYG editors that will actually strip all the Microsoft code off your content if you do use the cut and paste option.

I think there is also something to be said for the sophistication of Google when one errant tag from the most widely-used office suite on the planet can disable their ad serving. They really need to look into that.

The bigger problem here was not one of being tech savvy, though.