by Sue Horner | Jan 8, 2011 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Those crazy word-nerds in the American Dialect Society have done it again, coming out with “app” as their Word of the Year for 2010. As even your grandmother probably knows, app is short for software application, and has gained particular popularity in...
by Sue Horner | Nov 30, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Leave it to the British to give an award for Bad Sex in Fiction! The 18th annual (dis)honour, given out last night, went to Rowan Somerville for his novel The Shape of Her. Somerville won over the judges with phrases such as the one describing an act of lovemaking as...
by Sue Horner | Oct 10, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
It being Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, I am grateful for many things: love, friendship, family, work, health and happiness. But you know what else I truly appreciate? Those creative folks at Sesame Street. Yes, they have done it again, with a clever and funny parody...
![TTYL – I’m busy herding cats!]()
by Sue Horner | Oct 6, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Fall is that exciting time of year (for word nerds) when The Oxford American Dictionary adds new words and phrases — this year, 2,000 of them! What’s not to like about the list? It includes abbreviations now recognized as words, like BFF (best friends...
by Sue Horner | Sep 24, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
What makes me crazy Are apostrophes in signs. Know the one’s I mean? That is my haiku in honour of National Punctuation Day, September 24. (OK, I know an apostrophe is not punctuation, so it’s more of a haiku in honour of general grammatical attention to detail,...
by Sue Horner | Jul 6, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Writers spend much of our time agonizing over this word or that word, grammar and punctuation, all in an attempt to turn out a beautiful piece of work. But there’s a special category of writers who use their talents for a different, you might say evil, reason:...
by Sue Horner | Jun 29, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Here are some of the interesting and funny words I’ve run across recently. Most are from Buzzwhack and urbandictionary.com: Academic junk food: College courses with no value other than being an easy way to get an A. Anticipointment: The feeling you get when a...
by Sue Horner | Apr 1, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
In case you missed it, the winner of the prestigious Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year has been chosen. Drumroll, please. It is Daina Taimina’s Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes. No doubt you are as surprised as I that Governing Lethal...
by Sue Horner | Mar 1, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Phew. It’s been all Olympics, all the time for the past two weeks, and I’m ready to say goodbye to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. But first, my own gold medals go to the things I loved about these Winter Olympics. Gold medals: * Patriotic feelings....
by Sue Horner | Feb 23, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
If you pay close attention to words and love clever word play, you’ll enjoy The Bookseller, a British trade magazine, and its quirky “oddest book title” contest. I first ran across this contest in 2008 and have looked forward to reading about it ever...
