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.
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?
Using the spell-checker
How often has the spell-checker saved you from a blunder, typo or solecism? How often has it caused one?
Keep it simple, stupid – it's the law
Do you ever find yourself wading through a swamp of verbal sludge issued from a torpid governmental organ and wonder, ‘Does it have to be this complicated?’ The answer is ‘no’ – in fact, in the USA it’s now illegal to be.
The man without words
As Schaller explains, the consequence of not having a ‘language’ is so profound as to be almost unimaginable. Words not only affect how we interact with the world around us, they even control our capacity to think and conceptualise our experiences. We need words not only to communicate with other people, but also to build our own mental concepts of the world, our experience of it, of who we are.
The passive voice
The passive voice gets a bad press. From Don Watson to the Microsoft Word green squiggle under so many of our sentences, it has no shortage of critics. But if it’s so bad, what’s it doing in the English language anyway?
Starting an argument
When you know what you want to say—when you’ve taken the time to get your thoughts clear in your own mind—it becomes a far simpler matter to organise those thoughts on the page.
Document exchange services
As a writing and editing business, Red Pony had always relied on email for document exchange and project management, especially since many of our clients are located in other cities and sometimes other countries.
The importance of version control
The release of a new novel by acclaimed US author Jonathan Franzen has served to highlight the importance of version control. Apparently the version of his new novel Freedom launched in the UK earlier this month was printed using the wrong file.
Let me quote you on that
Attention pedants! If you’re looking for a fight, there’s no better field of battle than punctuation. Obviously the apostrophe is the punctuation mark that gets people the most steamed up, but the quotation mark or ‘inverted comma’ runs a close second.
Putting yourself in your client’s shoes
The lesson is this: always try to clarify in your mind who you are writing for—before you begin writing. Avoid making assumptions about the prior knowledge of your readers, particularly when writing for a medium as widely disseminated as a company website.
Fulsome prison blues
Sometimes words betray us; they don’t necessarily mean what we think they mean. We can go for years misusing relatively common words or phrases, getting them ever so slightly (or totally) wrong. It can be quite embarrassing, especially once we find out we’ve been getting it wrong all our lives.
Verbing nouns
But where does experimentation with language stop and gibberish start? A recent article in the Boston Globe tackled the problem of ‘verbing’ nouns. What? Well, when you verb a noun you are – just like it sounds – turning it into a verb.
Five tips for creating a compelling executive summary
Writing the executive summary is generally the most important and therefore daunting task in creating any document. As the name suggests, this section must target the decision makers—and it may well be the only part of the document they read. Therefore it is vital that it provide a concise, accurate and compelling summary of everything that follows.
Spelling traps – licence/license and practice/practise
The closest competitors for the stationary/stationery pairing (one of which, hopefully the correct one, you’ll find in my article above) for the title of Most Confused Spelling are the practice/practise and licence/license combinations.
Etymology corner
Welcome to an occasional feature of the Red Pony Express that will uncover the murky origins of mysterious phrases that have entered everyday idiom but which do not immediately betray their origins. This month: pushing the envelope, which means to exceed or extend the boundaries of the possible (or indeed, the permissible).
Large document, looming deadline: a 4-step survival guide
When faced with a daunting task such as this, it can be tempting to run for the hills, or at least bring forward your annual leave. Here’s a few survival tips to help you deliver.
Document localisation
What’s the lesson? Know your audience. Especially if a document is to have international exposure, it pays to carry out ‘document localisation’, in which the document is edited with specific sensitivity to another English-speaking market. This can involve identifying catastrophic missteps such as ‘bluegum’ but more commonly involves removing local idiosyncrasies that may be confusing or ambiguous to an overseas reader.
Rogue adjectives and adverbs
After wading through the fragrant fields of florid prose that can be the unmistakeable hallmark of some popular fiction, you may think overuse of adjectives and adverbs wouldn’t be such an issue in the drab world of business writing. Well … you’d be right, up to a point.
Writing for the web
While the goal in writing for the web is the same as for any other medium (convey your message clearly to your audience), there are a few differences to keep in mind.