by Sue Horner | Sep 18, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Having just edited a client’s news release, I found David Meerman Scott’s 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 the...
by Sue Horner | Sep 3, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
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...
by Sue Horner | Jul 16, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
When my elderly neighbour passed away more than a year ago, his daughter took time to mourn. Then she started the task of cleaning up and fixing up, intending to sell the place. It’s a small two-bedroom bungalow, so the likely buyer will be elderly. The...
by Sue Horner | Jun 21, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Stephen King’s books used to be on my reading list. Early in my working career, I read The Shining on the half-hour train from the suburbs into the city. I would get on the train and start reading, and suddenly I would look up, eyes wide and heart pounding, and...
by Sue Horner | Jun 11, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
What a great exercise in telling a story and setting a mood, in a tight framework too! I’m talking about the Copyblogger’s Twitter Writing Contest. The goal: Write a story in exactly 140 characters (the length of a post on Twitter, aka a tweet). Not more,...
by Sue Horner | May 22, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
If you are a blogger, consider yourself patted on the back by Anne Holland, Content Director of MarketingSherpa. She encourages bloggers in the May 12 newsletter (see #9) thusly: “Starting a blog is easy. Keeping the blog going for more than a few months is...
by Sue Horner | Mar 30, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I’ve been playing with the grammar function in Word after a reminder from the Publication Coach, Daphne Gray-Grant. By paying attention to things like words per sentence (aim for an average of 14 or less), passive sentences (no more than 10%) and Flesch-Kincaid...
by Sue Horner | Mar 16, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Writers love to interview someone who speaks naturally, compares a complex topic or object to something others can relate to and isn’t afraid to share personal feelings or thoughts. It just makes the whole writing process a lot easier. In the corporate world,...
by Sue Horner | Feb 8, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Do you ever feel like you’re drowning in emails? My friend, podcaster and fellow writer Donna Papacosta has a great tip for dealing with the growing volume of mail: Use the telephone. Not only can it save multiple emails back and forth, but it also gives you a...
by Sue Horner | Jan 25, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Those who spend large amounts of time online will totally understand when T.J. Larkin, in a weekly Larkin Pages research summary, says that we’re the ones responsible for half of our own interruptions. Think of all those blogs you follow, keeping up your own...
