by Sue Horner | Feb 27, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
E-newsletters and blogs have a lot in common, as Nick Usborne describes (in an e-newsletter about writing; subscribe here): 1. Good newsletters and blogs seek to engage your attention at a personal level. 2. Good newsletters and blogs both deliver timely information....
by Sue Horner | Feb 24, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
If you want to read a refreshing perspective on customer service, read “Seven steps to remarkable customer service” by Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Reading what his company does about customer service made me want to buy the software, and I...
by Sue Horner | Feb 23, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Ragan Communications’ free monthly newsletter, Grapevine (“Tips and tactics from the world of corporate communications”), shares a beef of mine this issue. Among the tips in a story called “What do you want from a Web site?” is avoiding my pet peeve: downloadable...
by Sue Horner | Feb 18, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
My 20-year-old son is home from university for reading week, and I notice that every time he takes the car out, he changes the radio to CD mode. He says it’s because he has no patience for radio. Two reasons: The stations don’t often play what he wants to...
by Sue Horner | Feb 12, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Now here’s a word you don’t run across very often: bedeguar. I had to search many places to find out it means “a gall produced on rosebushes,” gall being a type of fungus. Looking at that definition, you might be surprised to find out the word was not used in a...
by Sue Horner | Feb 8, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Just had to share another book that recently showed up at my local library (I was 29th on the “hold” list!): Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. I had read an excerpt in a magazine and found it hugely funny,...
by Sue Horner | Feb 7, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
An e-mail newsletter to which I subscribe (Writer’s Web Watch, now called Communications Concepts) recently recommended “improving your vocabulary” and using resources such as a thesaurus, grammar book, style guide and dictionary. I do have all these books on a nearby...
by Sue Horner | Feb 5, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
When I run across a book that’s highly recommended, I check if it’s available at my local library and put a hold on it. Quite often I have a number of books lined up, so when the call comes in that my “hold” is in, it’s always a surprise to see what’s waiting for me....
by Sue Horner | Jan 31, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
After puzzling over the name of this blog and doing a search that came up with things like the name of a football team, a colleague confessed he didn’t understand where “Red Jacket Diaries” came from. Here’s the short answer: I’m more introverted than extrovert, so if...
by Sue Horner | Jan 29, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Several different sources pointed me to a marvellous book on writing, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, published in 1994. The title comes from advice her father gave to her (then) 10-year-old brother, who was struggling to start...
