by Sue Horner | Apr 22, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
As confessed here before, I am certainly not perfect. But a flurry of errors in ads, newspapers, a concert program and a sign makes me wonder if anyone cares/notices any more. Spotted recently: Diamond in the ruff (rough) Patsy Klein (Cline) Gift’s with purchase...
by Sue Horner | Mar 22, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
From Encarta’s top 10 business buzzwords: Delayering: A newer, more PC term for “rightsizing,” a.k.a. downsizing. Potato, potahto. It’s still a layoff. Narcissurfing: Googling yourself to see where, when and how often you show up on the...
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 | Mar 7, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
“Subprime” was the American Dialect Society’s word of the year (yes, it happened in January so I’m late in posting about it), but the word that had my vote is “Googleganger.” Like doppleganger, it means a person with your name who...
by Sue Horner | Feb 27, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
The Toronto Star’s “the week’s best invented words” on the weekend included two I particularly enjoyed: Springbroke: the financial condition that follows Spring break (from UrbanDictionary.com) Landspam: spam delivered the old fashioned way: on...
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 | Feb 19, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
In “I’m done with social media,” Dave Fleet encourages us to write in terms the average person on the street can understand, such as “web site address” instead of “URL”: “I’ll open up my conversations to people who...
by Sue Horner | Feb 2, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
The other night, a friend and I attended a showing of the Tony Award-winning musical comedy that just arrived in Toronto from off-Broadway: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. The play tells the story of six students fiercely competing to be the champion...
by Sue Horner | Jan 17, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
It’s only marginally related to communications (let’s put it under word play) but if you’re a fan of occasional silly fun, I ran across a quiz (oops, no longer available) through the Mental Floss trivia newsletter: The quiz posted phrases and asked...
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...
