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.
Leading the reading: wayfinding in document design
‘Wayfinding refers to information systems that guide people through a physical environment and enhance their understanding and experience of the space.’
Make better buying decisions with better tender specifications
I’ve read a lot of project briefs and tender specifications over the years and, while I’ve seen some good ones, I’m constantly amazed at how many contain basic errors, are repetitive or are simply too vague to serve their function of establishing a baseline for comparable quotes.
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.
What I love about Red Pony clients
Earlier this month I was in Canberra for an Australian Government trade fair. Red Pony is a member of the government’s communications services panel, so I was there to meet people from the various departments and agencies who might engage our services. As I chatted to attendees, I began to reflect on the sales process for writing and editing services.
Making accessible Word documents
No clear thinking organisation would deliberately exclude potential clients or customers. Yet if you aren’t providing your audience with accessible Word documents, you may be doing exactly that.
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 truth about texting
Are you really committing a grievous error by using correct punctuation in text messages? A recent study out of the US getting a lot of media attention seems to suggest exactly that. But how much can we really read into their findings?
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?
Questions to ask before updating your website
The process of developing and launching a new website can be exhausting. It can take months (and sometimes years) to progress through the concept, design, content development, configuration and testing phases before the new site is finally uploaded to the live server. But what happens next?
Using tables
The very act of organising information into a matrix—grouping and labelling rows and columns in a meaningful way—is an important step in interpreting data for your readers. Here are a few tips for making the most of this handy device.
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.
Five words you can bet the house on
What do real estate ads really tell you about a property? According to Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, authors of the bestselling book, Freakonomics, the choice of wording might in fact indicate whether the agent is holding out for a high price or subtly encouraging would-be buyers to bid low.
But is it in the dictionary?
People sometimes get hot under the collar when a word (or particular definition of a word) that they consider to be colloquial or offensive, or just irritating, finds its way into the hallowed halls of the dictionary. They assume that the dictionary is saying it is now okay to use that word in polite company, or in lofty literary endeavour.
Four tips for developing a content-rich website
Some readers will be aware that back in December we launched a new version of the Red Pony website. I thought I’d take the opportunity to share a few of the lessons we learned from this exercise – from the perspective of both client and content provider.
Political correctness—a dirty word?
The term ‘politically correct’ or ‘PC’ is like a certain brand of Scandinavian pastry: it has layer upon layer of meaning. And between those flaky strata we find a weird melange of judgement, self-righteousness, empathy and nervousness.
Talking up down time
While there is a profusion of business advice about how to manage your time better (code for how to fill every waking minute with activity), there is precious little written in favour of stillness, quiet and uninterrupted thought.
It's a date!
Despite the globalisation of nearly every aspect of our lives, from newspaper ownership to junk food brands, there are still some basic things that we seem incapable of standardising, at least in the English-speaking world. One of these points of difference is how to write dates.