Insights archive
Red Pony is a team of writers, editors, Microsoft Office template developers and communications trainers. We have been writing about our areas of expertise for over a decade in our Red Pony Express newsletter.
This collection features the best articles from the last 10 years.
A treasure store of language
A thesaurus is a reference book that helps you find le mot juste—the exact word you need. (Obviously I need one to avoid the pretentiousness of using a French phrase to get my message across.) A thesaurus also helps you add variety and interest to your writing by broadening your vocabulary. But most importantly, a thesaurus is enormously useful for solving crossword puzzles.
Keeping software a current affair
Failing to keep your software up to date can have unforeseen and sometimes serious consequences.
Clichés in the news media
While the cliché can be a warm bath of convenience into which the lazy writer is often tempted to sink, a fresh, arresting image is more likely to call the inattentive reader to attention. Remember that it is far more memorable to be slapped with a fish than with the bog-standard open palm to the face.
And so it begins
‘They threw me off the hay truck about noon.’ Author Stephen King cites this opening line from James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice as a great example of how to begin a book.
Every pica tells a story
Clear writing and a firm editorial hand (whether your own or Red Pony’s) are the most important elements of clear business communication. But visual presentation also makes a big difference in getting your point across.
Five basic rules of email
The instantaneous nature of email means people can communicate and collaborate in the workplace to a degree never before possible. Clients or colleagues might be in a different city or even a different country, but email enables them to exchange information and ideas instantly – as if they were just over the partition. Well, almost.
What the font?
When the physicist announcing the possible discovery of the Higgs boson last July used the font Comic Sans in her presentation, she unwittingly became a combatant in the war against this widely derided typeface. But in choosing Comic Sans, perhaps Fabiola Gianotti was deliberately drawing on recent studies that suggest fonts that are harder to read actually help us retain information.
The war against cliché
If there’s one helpful thing to be said about making your writing clearer, it’s this: If you see a phrase you’ve heard a million times before (such as this one), replace it.
The power of metaphor
But often your goal is to persuade as much as it is to inform. And that’s where metaphor is your friend. Metaphors are so prevalent they often pass unnoticed, but that doesn’t mean they don’t leave a powerful impression in the mind of your audience.
Is your website losing you business?
One of your first tasks when setting up a new business is to establish a website. Your internet presence is indispensible for advertising your products or services to the world. But what if your website is doing more harm than good?
Grammar at work – who cares?!
Put simply, when you dash off an email and send it as soon as you’ve typed the final character, without rereading it and checking for errors, you’re saying to your recipient, ‘You are not important to me’. This may be your intention, but if it isn’t, take a breath and read that message one more time before you hit ‘send’.
Pick your national metaphor
I was listening to a visiting American political analyst on the radio the other day talking about the differences between Australian and American political language.
Think before you write
Next time you are about to launch into writing something important, metaphorically bite your tongue and consider your reader before you start writing or your message may not be read the way you intended.
Managing the email deluge
Email is the great contemporary communication blessing and curse—ubiquitous, instant … and inescapable. There’s over 300 billion of them flying round the world every single day, some of them useful, most of them spam.
Managing cross-platform reliability
As you may (or may not) be aware, Red Pony runs a Macintosh office. While this makes for an agreeable and elegant technological environment, we often require access to the Microsoft platform so we can be 100 per cent compatible with clients’ office environments.
Who am I writing for?
It can be a fraught matter, trying to ‘set the tone’ of a piece of writing. And when you’re trying to sell or promote something, your ear needs to be well calibrated to what your audience likes to hear.
Fix your grammar and improve your business
Sometimes at Red Pony we find ourselves trying to explain to a reluctant client just where the value lies in getting their business writing edited. ‘Perfect grammar ain’t gonna help me sell more widgets!’ I hear them cry.
Harnessing the power of words
This short film offers a wonderful insight into the power of language to actually change the way we think about our world. It also demonstrates how a simple idea can be communicated much more effectively by choosing a different combination of words.
Putting in a good Word
For anyone running a business, buying new software can be something of a double-edged sword. While new features can potentially save time and money, it can be hard to justify the (not insignificant) expense of the upgrade if the benefits aren’t immediately obvious.
How am I coming across?
It may seem obvious to say it, but how often do you check your own business correspondence (especially email) for similar lapses in decorum that may be slipping through?