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.
Is English becoming toxic?
Despite a global push for the use of plain English to boost reader understanding and accessibility, recent language trends and buzzwords suggest that English is actually becoming less accessible for the average user.
A Style manual for the digital age
Whenever I find myself editing a document, there are two resources I keep close at hand – a dictionary and the Australian Government Style manual. Unlike the dictionary, which I can access online (depending on the version required), the Style manual has always been a physical publication. Hopefully that is soon to change.
The global language of Christmas decorations
Many years ago I spent my first (and to date only) Christmas in Europe, where I experienced the winter-themed decorations adorning the streets and shopfronts in their original context for the first time.
The real magic of a letter to Santa
In a time when communication is primarily digital, and mostly informal, the seemingly simple act of writing a letter to Santa retains a special significance. Children once wrote regularly to people such as grandparents, other family members and penfriends. Now, a letter to Santa may be a child’s only experience of formal correspondence.
Sans Forgetica: the font to remember
Why would anyone design a font that is deliberately difficult to read? The answer is simple: to help people retain the information they are reading. A team of designers and behavioural scientists at RMIT University has created a new font for the specific purpose of aiding memory retention. It may seem counterintuitive, but by […]
Words are cheap but jargon comes at a cost
Most professions and industries have their own jargon – words and phrases that have a specific meaning within a particular group but a different meaning (or none at all) outside the group. To those who use it regularly, jargon can be inclusive. It’s the kind of language you hear at […]
Editing with artificial intelligence
Futurists predict that many of the jobs we do today will cease to exist when human labour is replaced by artificial intelligence (AI). Is the occupation of professional editor likely to be one of them?
Writing that’s ‘fit for purpose’
To determine whether something is fit for purpose, it must first be clear what the ‘purpose’ is. What are you intending to use the product for? The same applies to writing. All writing has a purpose or particular objective for a specific audience.
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.
What can copyeditors learn from Hollywood?
When you see the opening sequences as Lucas originally filmed them – our introduction to the main characters of the film – it’s frankly a mess. The initial space battle and capture of Princess Leia’s ship is intercut with scenes of Luke Skywalker repairing some electronic device, watching the battle through binoculars, and engaging in excruciatingly clichéd small talk about how he’d love to become a fighter pilot but his aunt and uncle need him on the farm.
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 […]
The genius of George Orwell
Back when I was a university student contemplating a topic for my English Literature Honours thesis, I thought it might be interesting to examine the early works of George Orwell, one of my favourite writers at the time. After twelve months of immersing myself in biographies, literacy criticism, opinion pieces and pretty much the entire […]
BBC subcommittee on words goes rogue and has to be shut down
‘BBC English’ might now seem deeply conservative, but it was once the site of fierce and excitable debate among a literary set who, if not actually drunk, were certainly drunk with power.
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.
How to tell someone they’re wrong
When is it a good idea to correct your boss? A fellow editor recently recounted the story of a teacher she knew who had been asked by the school principal to capitalise every instance of the word ‘maths’ in her student reports.
The generosity of plain English
Red Pony’s business writing trainer describes plain English writing as ‘putting the extra work in so your reader doesn’t have to’. Putting that extra effort in is an act of generosity towards your reader – it’s a kindness.
How a missing comma cost $13 million
Now a court in the US state of Maine has determined that an absence of a comma has cost a trucking company $US10 million (approximately AU$13 million) in unpaid overtime.