by Sue Horner | Sep 29, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
In this month’s newsletter, I’m revisiting a common question: How often should you publish an employee newsletter? A lot depends on whether you’re delivering news or providing background and perspective, how big it is and how many people are working on it, and...
by Sue Horner | Sep 21, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
“[P]unctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.” – Lynne Truss, in Eats, Shoots & Leaves It’s almost National Punctuation Day (Sept. 24), that “celebration of the lowly comma, correctly...
by Sue Horner | Sep 14, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Email marketing is a powerful tool. As proof, digital marketing expert Javed S. Khan shared these statistics at a recent meeting of IABC/Toronto’s Professional Independent Communicators: 91% of people check their email daily 88% regularly check email on their...
by Sue Horner | Sep 7, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
The plaintive opening drew me in immediately: “Why are many financial news releases and publicly filed documents written so poorly?” In A Plea for Plain English in Financial Documents, Steve Lipin and Adam Rosman make the case for good writing in financial...
by Sue Horner | Aug 31, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Last month, my bank sent me a snail mail letter alerting me to “Important changes” coming to my business account. The brochure got closer to the point: “Effective September 1, 2016, we’re simplifying our Business Banking Plans and making...
by Sue Horner | Aug 23, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
One of the best mission statements I’ve ever run across was framed as instructions in the managing editor’s office of the Rocky Mountain News (which folded in 2009): “Get the news. Tell the truth. Don’t be dull.” Companies spend serious...
by Sue Horner | Aug 17, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
There it was again, in a caption on the front page of a section of today’s newspaper: a sneak peak. (We won’t talk about the use of bugs in food. Ugh.) I feel silly offering guidance about when to use “peak” and when to use “peek,”...
by Sue Horner | Aug 10, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
The Olympics can’t keep up with the corporate world when it comes to jargon, but they sure have a vocabulary all their own. With the 2016 Summer Olympics in full swing in Rio, let’s take a look. The most noteworthy/cringeworthy is how achieving a medal has...
by Sue Horner | Aug 3, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Have you ever noticed that some words suddenly become popular, and you see them everywhere? Next thing you know, a solid word turns into overused jargon, or it gets mangled by misuse. Lately, I keep tripping over the word “resonate.” I understand its...
by Sue Horner | Jul 29, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I haven’t visited the spam holding pen for a while, so Friday seemed like a good time to check for the latest flattering and incoherent messages. (Thank goodness for Akismet, defender against blog comment spam. Although it no longer shows a running total, at one point...
