Proofreaders still MIA
Is it just me, or are errors in the printed word slipping through more than ever? I’m not talking about abbreviations in Twitter or texting, I mean words that sort of sound like they make sense, but are slightly to a long way off the mark. Here are some of the...
Controlled burn of my brain
Today presented itself to me as gloriously unstructured, pretty much the first such day since I embarked on my Royal Roads adventure last July. The reason: Year One is done. Yesterday, I submitted the final paper in the final class of the first year. I am torn between...
IABC11 highlights
The badge you see here is the type of identifier that marks IABC World Conference-goers, making it easy to strike up a conversation with people you don’t know. As I mentioned in my last post, that’s one of the benefits of the conference. Here are some of...
IABC11 – yes, another excellent adventure
“Communicatrix” Colleen Wainwright had a great line in her June newsletter that sums up the value of the 2011 IABC World Conference I just attended in San Diego: “We’re social beings, and to truly learn, grow and stay inspired, we need to get...
Five! Is too many!
Please tell my client that five exclamation points (or exclamation marks, if you prefer) in six sentences is too many. Last week I edited an annual report written by a non-profit group. Knowing the group wanted “donor-centric” copy, I deliberately left...
No respect for words
“Words are not much valued on the Internet, perhaps because it features so many of them.” So reads a line in a recent article by David Streitfeld in The New York Times, called “Funny or Die: Groupon’s Fate Hinges on Words.” The article...
Sue’s online life tanks
When I launched the Red Jacket Diaries, I worried that my track record of (not) keeping up a journal would be an indicator of my abilities to keep up a blog. For a while, though, I had a rhythm going, where I paid attention to the world and made a mental or written...Why The Red Jacket Diaries?
The Red Jacket Diaries track my experiences as an independent communicator, where a red “power jacket” is my secret weapon for changing from shy freelance writer to outgoing networker.