by Sue Horner | Jun 27, 2017 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Last week, I got a letter from the publisher of Reader’s Digest, indicating I “could” be a winner. Ooh, I have a chance to earn a chance to win ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS! The letter is a classic direct mail sales letter, complete with the required P.S., supposedly...
by Sue Horner | Jul 21, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
In a showdown between fast cars and slow-moving turtles, the losers are easy to spot, flattened on increasingly busy roads. The study of this often deadly interaction of road networks and nature is called road ecology. Some background reading I’m doing for a project...
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 | Jan 25, 2016 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Inc.com’s contributing editor, Geoffrey James, doesn’t sugarcoat it. In a piece called How Corporate-Speak Rots Your Brain and How To Stop It, he says jargon “makes you and everyone around you progressively less intelligent.” What’s more, rather than making you sound...
by Sue Horner | Jun 24, 2015 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Non-profit organizations use annual reports to let donors know where their money goes, and ask for more support. Yet a 2013 study* shows only 26 per cent of the Canadians surveyed think charities do a good job of explaining how donations are used. So, how does a...
by Sue Horner | May 27, 2015 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Wills are distasteful to begin with. You don’t want to think about someone dying, let alone squabble over who gets the investments and the heirloom silver, the stamp collection and the stacks of National Geographic. (I’m joking; we’re parceling out...
by Sue Horner | Apr 24, 2015 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
This time of year, corporate sustainability reports bloom like algae in a lake. These reports show the efforts a company makes to do the right things for the environment and the community. However, the language that describes what they do is often thick with jargon....
by Sue Horner | Aug 21, 2014 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Newsletter articles and any other writing — speaking too! — can be improved if you cut out “hollow and meaningless” business language. This gobbledygook is also known as jargon monoxide, a wonderful term I discovered this week in a tweet by Stanford...
by Sue Horner | Apr 25, 2013 | Most popular posts, The Red Jacket Diaries blog
The easier we make it to read our newsletters and other material, the more people will read, understand and retain. Sometimes copy reviewers – engineers and lawyers spring to mind – will challenge you. They’ll try to turn simple words into stilted, formal...
by Sue Horner | Feb 7, 2013 | Most popular posts, The Red Jacket Diaries blog
“Write for impatient users.” If you take nothing else away from the latest study done by web usability expert Jakob Nielsen, that would be it. While Nielsen was specifically looking at how teens navigate online, you could make the case that everyone is...
