by Sue Horner | May 22, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
If you’re looking for writing inspiration, here’s an idea: Turn up the tunes! Musicians do a masterful job of touching our hearts and souls, and sometimes our funnybones, too. Artists tell stories using many of the more traditional writer’s tools for...
by Sue Horner | May 19, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Time to get cranky, again, about jargon and annoying words. Who’s with me? First up are overused words that are quickly becoming jargon: Hacks. I get it, it’s a handy short word, which is useful in headlines. In most cases, it’s thin disguise for...
by Sue Horner | May 11, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
The phrase stopped me in my tracks. “Man-hours.” I was interviewing a client’s internal expert, a man, talking about a recent maintenance shutdown. When he mentioned how many “man-hours” were involved, I asked if his crew was all men, and he said no, there were a few...
by Sue Horner | Apr 24, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Have you ever been urged to “show, don’t tell” in your writing? Then you want to think about expressive writing. For a compelling example of the power of language, take a look at this fascinating piece about earthquakes by journalist Kathryn Schulz in The New Yorker....
by Sue Horner | Apr 19, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
What I write for employee newsletters and other content often involves explaining dense, complicated and potentially boring subjects. Yet a client once paid me this huge compliment: that among my strengths is the “ability to find the human angle in any...
by Sue Horner | Mar 9, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
A photo caption’s job isn’t to tell the whole story all by itself. Ideally, the photo captures attention; the caption adds meaning and leads the reader to the story for more details. Of course, there are plenty of rules about captions (also called cutlines). A...
by Sue Horner | Mar 4, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
It’s National Grammar Day! I know, exciting, isn’t it? 🙂 The big day goes back to 2008, when Martha Brockenbrough and the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG) founded it. SPOGG is “for people appalled by bad grammar in public spaces.” Yup,...
by Sue Horner | Feb 18, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Steve Jobs illustrated the value of an iPod by saying it would let you take your whole music library with you in your pocket. That’s the kind of expressive language that gives readers or listeners an “aha!” moment of understanding. The February issue of my...
by Sue Horner | Oct 7, 2015 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Let’s face it; not many people use “whom” anymore. It just seems a little stuffy, doesn’t it? As The Oatmeal has said in a funny piece on who vs. whom, “you could probably go the rest of your life without ever using whom and 99.9% of the...
by Sue Horner | Sep 22, 2015 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Employees, customers and others who have been wronged by corporate action/inaction want and deserve an apology. Yet lawyers and executives are wary of what could be seen as “admitting fault.” As Elton John sings, “Sorry” does indeed seem to be the hardest word. But...
