Bullet protocol: How to handle lists (Wordnerdery)
Readers love lists. Organizing long and possibly confusing information into a list helps readers scan and understand the information. But there are multiple ways to use punctuation in lists, as I was reminded while proofreading a client document that used all of them....
More awful writing to inspire you
If you like the idea of spinning a wordy, over-the-top sentence that would be proud to launch a bad novel, you must know about the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. I first found and wrote about this amusing contest in 2009, although it began in 1982. As the site says,...
Words, writing and more: Links to great content you might have missed
Oh, hello! (Gets up and dusts herself off.) You may have noticed that I’ve fallen off the weekly blogging bandwagon. I’ll blame work, and summer, and maybe a lack of blog mojo. Instead of an original post, here are some of the smart, helpful, and sometimes...
5 ways to help make numbers make sense (Wordnerdery)
Making a tiny change in your own life that would fight climate change seems impossible. That may seem especially so after a week that saw catastrophic flooding in Europe, wildfires in Western Canada and the U.S., a tornado north of Toronto and more. Yet Starbucks...
Launch your business, already! Here’s some advice
As companies talk about calling all employees back to a physical office, they may have sparked what’s being called the “Great Resignation.” One in three professionals now working from home would look for a new job if they have to go back to the office, says...
Top 10 posts in the Red Jacket Diaries so far this year
Is it just me, or do you find it astonishing that the first half of the year has hurtled past? If it’s July, then, it’s past time for my usual look back at the 10 most-viewed blog posts of the year. While the pandemic dominated the blog and our lives in 2020, I may...
Side parts are out; newsletters are back (Wordnerdery)
“Side parts are out. Tight pants are over. And newsletters are officially back.” I laughed at that comment in Business 2 Community, riffing on the recent “cheugy” word wars. It seems Gen Zs (born 1997–2015) have decreed items supposedly loved by Millennials (born...
Let’s not let others be treated as ‘less than‘
They weren’t hugged, even though some were as young as three. They weren’t comforted at being separated from their families. They weren’t fed properly or protected from abuse. And at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., 215 Indigenous children were buried in...