by Sue Horner | Jul 18, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
What happens when a phrase references old technology? It becomes a prime candidate for being misspelled. I thought of this when spotting “put us through the ringer” in my local newspaper. The word should be spelled “wringer,” as in the old...
by Sue Horner | Jul 12, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Talk about a never-ending job! Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) recently added some new words, chosen among submissions from readers for their favourite word not in the dictionary. Sadly, one of the top choices was...
by Sue Horner | May 1, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
MarketingSherpa’s free weekly newsletter led me to the wonderfully named Gobbledygook Manifesto, which was cited as a winner in its 2007 Viral Marketing Hall of Fame. David Meerman Scott calls himself an “online thought leadership strategist” (hmm,...
by Sue Horner | Mar 17, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Did you know that there is another “holiday season” approaching? I know this because a weekend flyer from a local grocery store mentions it several times. It was a little puzzling, at first, because it’s March. The only “holiday season”...
by Sue Horner | Feb 12, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Now here’s a word you don’t run across very often: bedeguar. I had to search many places to find out it means “a gall produced on rosebushes,” gall being a type of fungus. Looking at that definition, you might be surprised to find out the word was not used in a...
by Sue Horner | Feb 7, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
An e-mail newsletter to which I subscribe (Writer’s Web Watch, now called Communications Concepts) recently recommended “improving your vocabulary” and using resources such as a thesaurus, grammar book, style guide and dictionary. I do have all these books on a nearby...
by Sue Horner | Jan 26, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not perfect. But like author Lynne Truss of Eats, Shoots and Leaves fame, I can’t help but notice and be appalled by the punctuation mistakes that regularly get past proofreaders. (Or perhaps nobody hires proofreaders...
