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.
If you type two spaces after a full stop, you’re wrong!
Despite its prevalence, a double space at the end of a sentence is simply incorrect.
PerfectIt! editing software
PerfectIt! from Intelligent Editing claims to locate typos and grammatical errors in Microsoft Word documents – which is what the spell checker does already, I hear you say. Yes, this is true, but it also claims to detect other errors that ‘no spelling or grammar check will discover’. What they are talking about is consistency, which can be one of the biggest headache-sources for editors.
Why proofreading is not an optional extra
After all the hard work that goes into a project, if the documentation provided to the client contains spelling and grammatical errors, is poorly structured and generally difficult to read, it reflects badly on everyone involved, and the expense saved on proofreading may prove to be a greater cost in the long run.
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.
Ask the punctuation doctor
While the correct use of en or em dashes can bring clarity to a sentence that contains a number of complicated, interconnected ideas, in a lot of cases it can be better to break such a long sentence down into shorter ones. As an exercise, this is worth trying. It can help you pare an idea down to its essentials and force the subsidiary material to justify its presence. Maybe you don’t need those parenthetical statements after all?
Don’t let the manual be an afterthought
I’ve come across a couple of events in the media recently that have served to highlight the importance of good documentation, and the significant risks of not having a clear and credible user manual.
The value of handwriting
It wasn’t so long ago that every writing task started with a pen and paper, and possibly a snifter of port in front of a warm fire. That’s a much more welcoming creative environment, isn’t it? And while the most agreeable parts of that environment can’t be replicated in most offices, you can at least turn off the disapproving Cyclops on your desk and pick up a pen … or pencil, or crayon. Don’t laugh. Any strategy that connects you with the neglected part of your brain that flourished in infancy can produce terrific creative advantages.
Google refines search algorithm to reward originality
In February this year Google announced a significant change to the algorithm it uses to rank search results. What’s most notable about the change is that it’s designed to reward websites that feature quality, original content.
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.
Episodes in the archaeology of spelling
Spelling in the English language can sometimes seem a very arbitrary proposition. Aside from the peculiarities within the language itself, there’s the long list of variations between US and British/Australian usage.
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.