by Sue Horner | Dec 31, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Champagne on ice? Check. Cupboards stocked with food? Check. Coins in the pocket to signify wealth for the coming year? Check. Twelve grapes to gobble at midnight, also meaning wealth? Check. Bright red or yellow undies to ‘catch’ love or money? Er...
by Sue Horner | Dec 19, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
We interrupt the week’s frantic shopping, work and studies to bring you this important public message: Do not wait to live your life until you find the perfect man or woman. If the Sexiest Man Alive (so named by People magazine), Ryan Reynolds, and the Sexiest...
by Sue Horner | Dec 10, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Maybe it’s the influence of Legal departments, who prefer the blameless “mistakes were made” or “it was decided” to naming names. But corporate writers often have to fight for the active voice — you know, where the subject performs...
by Sue Horner | Dec 2, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
While Facebook and Twitter continue to get all the press, email newsletters just keep building their solid reputation. In fact, they are “the Internet’s best tool for supplementing a website,” according to web usability expert Jakob Nielsen:...
by Sue Horner | Nov 30, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Leave it to the British to give an award for Bad Sex in Fiction! The 18th annual (dis)honour, given out last night, went to Rowan Somerville for his novel The Shape of Her. Somerville won over the judges with phrases such as the one describing an act of lovemaking as...
by Sue Horner | Nov 25, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Yesterday, a headline in a prominent newspaper boldly proclaimed that the Saudi king was handing over the reigns while he was in the U.S. for treatment. Since a king only has one reign, and he holds it whether he’s in the U.S. or not, I thought at first maybe...
by Sue Horner | Nov 22, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
The author of one of my textbooks must be a friend of the magniloquent (see below) Conrad Black, or maybe a contributor to the harder levels of FreeRice.com. I say that because the text is sprinkled with so many obscure, unusual, “look how smart I am” kinds of words....
by Sue Horner | Nov 19, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Nobody believes a corporate announcement* that an executive has left to “pursue other opportunities,” so why do companies continue to pretend that they don’t fire people? Sometimes the person’s “contract has not been renewed” or he...
by Sue Horner | Nov 16, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Hobbyists, or people who express their personal musings online as a hobby, make up the “backbone” (64%) of the blogging world, according to Technorati’s 2010 State of the blogosphere, which covered 7,200 bloggers. Self-employeds, like me, make up the...
by Sue Horner | Nov 8, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Two things jumped out at me about the 2009 IABC/Canada online salary survey*: 1. “Nationally speaking, men do appear to make more on average than women.” According to the survey, the mean (essentially the average) yearly salary / median (the middle-most value when the...
