Sue Horner is a freelance writer in Oakville, Ontario, who blogs about writing, newsletters, communications and running an independent business in The Red Jacket Diaries blog.
Glad to find more company in confusion. Thanks to Judy Gombita for pointing me to a copywriter in tech PR, the blogger behind The Friendly Ghost, who asks, “What is Twitter for, exactly?” He speculates it’s a form of micro-blogging, which I can see...
Glad to find out I’m not the only one somewhat confused about how to use/make the most of social media — you know, LinkedIn, MyRagan, Facebook, MySpace, [oops forgot Melcrum’s Communicators’ Network] etc. Pamela Slim at the entertaining Escape...
What happens when a phrase references old technology? It becomes a prime candidate for being misspelled. I thought of this when spotting “put us through the ringer” in my local newspaper. The word should be spelled “wringer,” as in the old...
Talk about a never-ending job! Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) recently added some new words, chosen among submissions from readers for their favourite word not in the dictionary. Sadly, one of the top choices was...
While catching up on my reading after being away, I ran across an interesting article in Saturday’s Toronto Star. In “The tyranny of residual media,” freelance writer Ryan Bigge talks about the iPhone and how consumers chase the new and improved. As...
Twice in the past couple of weeks I’ve been to events “celebrating the life” of someone who had recently died. Let’s just say there were lessons learned from each. The first was a hockey teammate of my husband’s, gone at age 58 due to...
Don’t you find that keeping up with blogs and blogging goes out the window when things are busy? I finally have a few minutes to catch up after a “drop everything and do this NOW” project this week that I just completed. This was something I had to...
My preferred method of getting a comment from someone to include in an article for an employee publication is to actually talk to the person and get the comment straight from him/her. (I know, what a concept!) As with writing a speech for another person, it’s...
I ran across a couple of instances this week where the writer chose words that didn’t quite hit the mark, in my opinion: “Church for people who like church” (seen on a notice board outside a church). It appears to be out there as a selling feature,...
When it comes to writing that you want people to read and understand, simple and familiar is good. Many executives don’t see it that way, though; they want to “utilize” this and “optimize” that until you want to scream. My rule of thumb...
