Red Pony Express marks its 15th year
Image: Ilya Chunin on Unsplash
Back in 2008, my colleague Andrew Eather and I began working on ideas for a newsletter we could send out every couple of months. The purpose was to offer readers tips to improve their business communications and other topics of interest, while also raising the profile of Red Pony and the work we do.
We sent the very first Red Pony Express in February 2009, featuring articles on the value of writing case studies and whether it’s okay to end a sentence on a preposition (spoiler alert: it is).
Andrew was the undisputed master of the headline, culminating in our all-time favourite for an article on whether the term ‘whom’ was becoming an anachronism: For ‘whom’, the bell tolls. These days Andrew is the busy dad of 3 boys and may or may not be working on a novel (he won’t tell me).
Kyra-Bae Snell joined the team briefly and contributed several articles, including the sage advice to Think before you write. Kyra left to have her third child and then co-founded CareAbout where she is now the Executive Director and all-round go-getter.
Belinda Nemec explained the meaning of a ‘dangling modifier’ which can unintentionally make your writing much funnier, but not necessarily more meaningful. She also provided us with The Clayton’s apology, which is probably the first and last time she will write something that references Australian Rules Football. Belinda still works for Red Pony as a freelance consultant.
My favourite piece from McKinley Valentine would have to be her examination of a judge’s ruling in a child custody case and how his use of plain language was an act of great kindness to the children involved. A close second would be BBC subcommittee on words goes rogue and has to be shut down, which had the additional benefit of being completely true. McKinley now writes her own newsletter, The Whippet, and is a researcher for ABC’s Hard Quiz.
Karen Farrar used an anatomical analogy (fitting given her background as a cardiac physiologist and sonographer) to explain how to structure a piece of communication in A body of writing. Karen has since returned to the health sector where she specialises in content strategy and digital communications.
While I wouldn’t have immediately picked Natalina Nheu as a Star Wars fan, she did give us Yodish: not so out of this world explaining how the little green guy who was sensei to Luke Skywalker uses a quirky form of English that nevertheless employs recognisable and consistent grammar rules. These days Natalina cares for her father and a small but well-tended garden.
Which brings me to our most recent contributor, Dominic Symes, who joined the Red Pony team last year. Dom drew on his previous experience in academia to give us Cite management as his first Red Pony Express article. Check out his latest piece on ‘performative utterances’.
And so ends my ‘clip show’ revisit of the Red Pony Express archive. I can only hope you have enjoyed reading them as much as we have writing them.
