The quantum field theoretic treatment of inclusive deep-inelastic diffractive scattering given in a previous paper (Blümlein et al. in Nucl. Phys. B 755:112–136, 2006) is discussed in detail using an equivalent formulation with the aim to derive a representation suitable for data analysis. We consider the off-cone twist-2 light-cone operators to derive the target-mass and finite t corrections to diffractive deep-inelastic scattering and deep-inelastic scattering. The corrections turn out to be at most proportional to x|t|/Q 2, xM 2/Q 2, x=x BJ or x ℙ, which suggests an expansion in these parameters. Their contribution varies in size considering diffractive scattering or meson-exchange processes. Relations between different kinematic amplitudes which are determined by one and the same diffractive GPD or its moments are derived. In the limit t,M 2→0 one obtains the results of (Blümlein and Robaschik in Phys. Lett. B 517:222, 2001) and (Blümlein and Robaschik in Phys. Rev. D 65:096002, 2002).