by Sue Horner | Jan 29, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
One of the best reminders I’ve seen lately related to keeping e-mails brief and to the point comes from Matthew Stibbe’s “Ten laws for better email copy”: “Imagine…that you were paying by the word.”
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...
by Sue Horner | Jan 16, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
One of my clients used to challenge those of us (employees and freelancers) who wrote for the employee newsletter to come up with ever more interesting and clever headlines. During a weekly conference call discussing the newsletter, the editor often mentioned...
by Sue Horner | Jan 14, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
There was some back and forth in the Toronto Star last week about outdated language in reference to people with disabilities. A column by Kathy English noted that former Ontario MPP Gary Malkowski, a long-time advocate for those who are deaf, took offence at a Star...
by Sue Horner | Nov 27, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Spot quiz: Is the American holiday in February: a) President’s Day b) Presidents’ Day c) Presidents Day? Surprise! The answer seems to be (d), all of the above. While editing a client’s calendar, which included reference to both Canadian and American...
by Sue Horner | Oct 31, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I loved this line, from Daphne Gray-Grant’s “Power Writing” e-newsletter: “Your brain is not a trained seal designed to perform tricks (such as excellent writing) on demand.” Her point was that “perfectly formed prose”...
by Sue Horner | Oct 29, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Ugh. While proofreading Big Company’s newsletter the other day, I saw that the CEO talked about competitors having “offshored” parts of their processes. One of my pet peeves is turning perfectly decent nouns into verbs. “Tasking” a group...
by Sue Horner | Oct 7, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Thursday and Friday saw me in downtown Toronto at IABC’s two-day writing conference, which featured a number of well-known presenters who have wowed audiences at IABC’s international conferences. Here are some of the things I learned/was reminded...
by Sue Horner | Oct 1, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I’ve ranted before about the bad things that happen to good quotes at the hands of executives, so I was pleased to see my sentiments echoed in an article (sorry, I tried to link to it but it may be one of those limited-time-access things) by the impassioned...
by Sue Horner | Sep 24, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
A post on Dan Santow’s Word Wise blog says, “It’s bad out there and getting worse.” He’s talking about the increasingly common habit of inserting capital letters where none are required to indicate an Important Word. He goes on to give a comprehensive list of...
