The Red Jacket Diaries blog

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.

Make it easy to do business

Jakob Nielsen’s September 15th Alertbox talks about store locators on web sites, where he says “it must be not only possible to accomplish the task, but also easy and pleasant to do so.” Good advice. I’ve run into sites before where it’s...

Weed out weasel words

Having just edited a client’s news release, I found David Meerman Scott’s recent post on weasel words, gobbledygook, jargon and other baloney quite topical! (Check it out for some awful examples of what not to write.) The release I worked on started out in...
5 steps to keep paying the rent

5 steps to keep paying the rent

Don’t you almost hate to watch the news, open a newspaper or check your stocks these days? The bad news is unrelenting. Formerly solid companies going bust. Layoffs. Gasoline prices through the roof. Catastrophic weather. It’s definitely an uncertain world we live in....

Say what you mean

(I posted this earlier today, but a hard drive failure on the server hosting my site washed it away. So apologies if it shows up twice. To make up, I’ve added two bonus errors!) We all make mistakes, but in this business, you need to work hard to keep the error...
Straw to gold in 5 steps

Straw to gold in 5 steps

Last week, I was juggling several different articles for two different employee publications. One somewhat daunting piece started off with three interviews, four people to quote and three pages of notes. I had 1,500 words to boil down into 500, a process I like to...

Overcoming the solo proprieter blues

Being a solo communicator can be lonely. Les Potter, ABC, communications guru and visiting instructor at Towson University, once blogged about the loneliness of the solo communicator and the importance of regular social interaction with fellow professionals. He quoted...