by Sue Horner | Sep 5, 2019 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
September marks the launch of the latest season of my guilty pleasure, Dancing with the Stars. You might think the show is mostly about the women’s scanty costumes, or possibly B-list celebrities getting some visibility. But the real point is to take non-dancers,...
by Sue Horner | Aug 22, 2019 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Print seems to be having a moment: IABC relaunched a print magazine in June. Its former Communication World was once printed monthly and more recently became online only. The new Catalyst will come out twice a year. Mentalfloss.com joined forces with the Paper &...
by Sue Horner | Aug 15, 2019 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Country music has a reputation for sad songs involving drinking, trucks, love gone wrong, and more drinking. While that’s still often the case, today’s stars are often more thoughtful about looking at and learning from past mistakes. They also put on a master class in...
by Sue Horner | Aug 9, 2019 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
My word-a-day calendar is famous for sharing words that make you go “huh?” True, they are often the “perfect” word for a specific situation (like petrichor, as I’ve talked about before). But they are more likely to set up a roadblock to meaning than open up an...
by Sue Horner | Aug 1, 2019 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Smart communicators use multiple channels to reach employees, and email remains a constant for most workplaces. But dealing with the “excessive volume” of communications is a challenge for companies around the world, according to State of the Sector 2019 –...
by Sue Horner | Jul 26, 2019 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Having been on the outside of company employee communication for many years, I’ve recently gone looking for the current “inside” view. The July issue of my newsletter, Wordnerdery, continues a series where I report the results. In this issue, I look at how Chartwell...
by Sue Horner | Jul 17, 2019 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Who doesn’t love a slice of deliberately bad writing? Yes, word nerds, gather ’round. It’s time to celebrate the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest, “where ‘www’ means ‘wretched writers welcome.’” The contest awards the best of the worst opening sentences, or what the...
by Sue Horner | Jul 11, 2019 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
You know the year is already half over when it’s pool season in Canada. That means it’s time to look back at the most-viewed posts on my Red Jacket Diaries blog so far in 2019. I’m often inspired to blog about what’s going on around me, such as in these posts:...
by Sue Horner | Jul 4, 2019 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
People are upset with Kim Kardashian because she tried to use (and trademark) the name “Kimono” for her new line of “shapewear.” Her plan was to call it Kimono Solutionwear. Apparently, the uproar was enough that she’s already backed down and is giving “careful...
by Sue Horner | Jun 28, 2019 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
One way to help people understood something is get to the point. Don’t bury your information in too much detail, ramble, or hide the action with passive language. While falling down the rabbit hole of internet links one day, I happened upon an article from 2015 that...