by Sue Horner | Apr 8, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Some writers are known for sprinkling unusual words throughout their copy. It becomes their style or maybe a familiar quirk, but I do think it puts up a barrier between writer and reader. If you have to stop reading to go look up the word, doesn’t that break the...
by Sue Horner | Mar 4, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
“There are huge problems in this world, and then there are problems that can be solved by everyday people with red pens and a little moxie.” So says the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, which has proclaimed today National Grammar Day. Not...
by Sue Horner | Mar 2, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
For your reading pleasure, more examples of clever writers getting a specific point across: “Guys like Bruce were as common as white socks sold in six packs at the Wal-Mart.” – Jennifer Weiner in Good in Bed “Abiding by the rules worked until...
by Sue Horner | Feb 26, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Here’s a new way to waste time practice your Scrabble(R) skills: Scrabble Zone, found at Merriam-Webster Online. You don’t actually connect the words the way you do on a Scrabble board, just make a word as fast as possible with the tiles given. Premium...
by Sue Horner | Feb 14, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
This week, a Toronto newspaper ran a story with a headline containing a buzzword that is one of my most detested — “win-win” — so it’s obvious the battle against meaningless phrases must continue. On our side, we have sites that make fun...
by Sue Horner | Feb 5, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
At one point, word clouds were everywhere: illustrating a newspaper article, highlighting a book’s content, offering a glimpse into a web site. And for good reason. They are great visual signals for what’s inside. I made the one shown here with a fun toy...
by Sue Horner | Feb 2, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Some interesting words I’ve run across lately: Wrapsimonious: “Joe recycles nothing, so when he carefully removes the paper from his gift, he’s just being wrapsimonious so he won’t have to purchase any.” (From Verbotomy) Clickstream: The...
by Sue Horner | Jan 13, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
You’d expect a “word of the year” to be something special, wouldn’t you? So it’s somewhat disappointing that the American Dialect Society’s word of the year for 2008 is…drumroll…bailout. Even Grant Barrett, chair of the...
by Sue Horner | Jan 1, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Happy new year! Word nerds enjoy this time of year, when various dictionaries and other authorities name top and top 10 words: Merriam-Webster lists bailout as the word of the year for 2008 after it received the highest intensity of lookups on Merriam-Webster Online....
by Sue Horner | Dec 23, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
We had lots of snow on Friday and a little more over the weekend, dropping a heavy blanket over the trails where Jake and I usually walk. Snow like this always makes me think of my favourite Robert Frost poem, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, which I just learned...
