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: Patriotic feelings. Canadians are...
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...
by Sue Horner | Dec 22, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
“It’s the Holiday Season.” This phrase drives me crazy, whether or not it is accented by unnecessary capitalization. Winter is a season; so is spring. Christmas (and the ensuing holiday) is not a season, even though advertising that starts before the...
by Sue Horner | Nov 4, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
If you used Google today, you will have noticed the “l” looks a little different. In fact, it looks like a pair of legs — those bright orange legs belonging to Big Bird. The “doodle” celebrates the fact that Sesame Street is 40 this...
by Sue Horner | Sep 25, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Yesterday was a big day for those of us who notice and cringe at signs with extra or missing apostrophes. If people suggest that makes you a nitpicker, tell them you have nothing on former newspaperman Jeff Rubin, the founder of National Punctuation Day. Jeff started...
by Sue Horner | Aug 28, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Here are some interesting items I came across this week: PostSecret: Frank Warren started PostSecret.com as a community art project. Since November 2004, he has received more than 150,000 postcards, each sent anonymously and containing that person’s secret. The...
