by Sue Horner | Jul 17, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Marketers are going after another supposedly influential group these days: Generation Jones, a term coined by Los Angeles “culture expert” Jonathan Pontell. This is the group within Baby Boomers born between 1954 and 1965. It probably tells you something...
by Sue Horner | May 30, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I ran across a couple of words this week (on Word Spy and Buzz Whack) that particularly appealed to me: Staycation. When you spend your vacation at home. (Thanks to high gas prices and a sluggish economy, it’s all many of us can afford.) Also known to those of...
by Sue Horner | Mar 18, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
While proofreading a client’s newsletter, I flagged this: A person quoted in an article about the switch of IT support to a call centre in India calls the staff “a well-trained, highly incented and duly rewarded group of employees.” UGH! I understand...
by Sue Horner | Feb 26, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Poets and musicians have a way with words. The snow falling as I write this brings to mind: my favourite Robert Frost poem, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening (“He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow”) and Canadian folk singer Gordon...
by Sue Horner | Jan 16, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
One of my clients used to challenge those of us (employees and freelancers) who wrote for the employee newsletter to come up with ever more interesting and clever headlines. During a weekly conference call discussing the newsletter, the editor often mentioned...
by Sue Horner | Jan 14, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
There was some back and forth in the Toronto Star recently about outdated language in reference to people with disabilities. Former Ontario MPP Gary Malkowski, a long-time advocate for those who are deaf, took offence at a Star headline that used the phrase,...
by Sue Horner | Dec 20, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
The gamer term of joy, “w00t,” tops the 30 words and phrases of 2007 listed by BuzzCanuck. Can I get a “w00t”? I was surprised by a few entries, though, that seem to have been around for an awfully long time. What are they doing being on a hot...
by Sue Horner | Nov 6, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
You know technology has truly infiltrated our lives when tech terms apply to people. A client recently asked what my bandwidth was. It used to mean how much data could be sent through a network or modem, but now it’s evolved to mean “how much extra time do...
by Sue Horner | Oct 1, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I’ve ranted before about the bad things that happen to good quotes at the hands of executives, so I was pleased to see my sentiments echoed in an article (sorry, I tried to link to it but it may be one of those limited-time-access things) by the impassioned...
by Sue Horner | Aug 1, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
No wonder employees find it hard to understand company “leaders” (the new word for managers, apparently). The latest “BigExec-speak” I ran into this week: Action as a verb, as in, “We’ll action those areas.” Ugh. Criticality....
