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.
Time for a good segue
As I join the Red Pony team, it seems the perfect time to write about segues. A segue is ‘an uninterrupted transition from one piece of music or film scene to another’ in musical terms or, more generally, a ‘smooth transition from one role, state, or condition to another’ (Oxford Dictionaries). The second of these […]
Is writing a dying art?
Whenever he conducts a business writing workshop, our trainer asks participants what proportion of their workday is spent writing (e.g. emails, reports and presentations). The answer is usually somewhere between 50 and 75 per cent.
How to identify fake news
The result is that people have become more sceptical of all forms of media, and less likely to accept information presented to them, no matter how credible. It's therefore more important than ever to practise 'critical reading', something we may have first learnt about in school.
Experts vs beginners: know your audience
You cannot write well if you don’t know your audience. It’s one of the first questions we ask our clients. The same point can and should be conveyed completely differently, depending on who will be reading it.
Where do Christmas cards come from?
Ever wondered where the tradition of sending Christmas cards originated? I did, so I undertook a little research (okay, I googled it and did some reading on Wikipedia). Here’s what I learnt … The general consensus is […]
When word choice becomes a political act
Part of our job as editors is to tweak any language that might make readers feel excluded or stereotyped – for example, changing ‘firemen’ to ‘firefighters’. In theory, this could be seen as a political act, but these days ‘some firefighters are women’ is hardly controversial, and we wouldn’t expect any pushback.
Making every word count: improving writing with data
Bad writing can be expensive. This is the conclusion of author Josh Bernoff, whose Harvard Business Review article ‘Bad writing is destroying your company’s productivity’ looks at the hidden costs of poor communication.
Are print dictionaries dying? And should we care?
In 2010, the Oxford English Dictionary announced that its next edition would probably never be printed, but would instead only be available online. The 20-volume dictionary is the most comprehensive in the world, but that much data can now be stored on a device the size of a pencil case.
The art and science of speechwriting
As a massive fan of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing, I always relish the opportunity to call on my inner Toby Ziegler when someone asks me to help them with writing a speech.
A wide vocabulary is good for your mental health
There are dozens of ways to describe feeling angry. When you read the news these days, do you say that you’re vexed, livid or ropeable? Merely miffed or incandescent with rage? Or are you more of a HULK MAD, HULK SMASH kind of communicator? It turns out that it could matter a lot.
Is it actually possible to use English incorrectly?
As a writer and editor, my professional existence relies on my ability to use the English language to communicate. But given the constantly evolving nature of English, is it actually possible to ever truly use it incorrectly?
Does the language you use change the way you think?
As a writer and editor I’ve always believed that the words you use matter – that all synonyms are not created equal. For example, if you were describing a traffic accident, would you say the cars contacted each other, hit, bumped, collided or smashed?
Don’t lead your readers up the garden path
‘The government plans to raise taxes were defeated.’ Did you stumble over that sentence? If you’re like most people, you read ‘government’ as a noun and ‘plans’ as a verb, and when you got to ‘were defeated’, the sentence suddenly made no sense, and you had to go back and read it again.
The Clayton’s apology
When we do the wrong thing, whether intentionally or unintentionally, we should apologise, particularly to any person we have harmed in some way. Few people will argue with this in theory. But some apologies are not apologies.
How copyright works
The galloping development of the internet and other technologies is making the world’s creative work – literature, painting, music, games, film – available at the touch of a few keys. But just because you can easily reproduce or re-publish something you find online, doesn’t mean it’s legal to do so.
Why Coca-Cola is better than Pepsi (grammatically speaking)
To what degree is good grammar a predictor of overall success? According to a recent study, there may be a correlation between good writing and how a company performs against its competitors.
Failure of the heart muscle
The English language has a huge and rich vocabulary, having absorbed words from so many other languages: Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Norman French, Yiddish, Anglo-Saxon, German … so why restrict ourselves to a small set of tired clichés that convey little if any meaning?
Using the hyphen
As an editor I spend quite a lot of time looking things up in the dictionary. The most common reason for me to do this is to check whether or not a word or phrase should be hyphenated.
Four tips for writing an effective sales letter
Red Pony recently developed a simple sales letter for a small local company. We went with a direct approach that has been delivering excellent results to date. I thought I’d share some of the secrets to success.
The music of words
Most business writing is read silently by individuals. Spoken texts delivered to groups of listeners, such as speeches and conference papers, form only a fraction of the millions of sentences produced in workplaces every day. Nevertheless, the way a text ‘sounds’, even in the reader’s head, can help or hinder delivery of the intended message.