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 since 2009 in our Red Pony Express newsletter.
This collection features a selection of our best articles.
What the font?
When the physicist announcing the possible discovery of the Higgs boson last July used the font Comic Sans in her presentation, she unwittingly became a combatant in the war against this widely derided typeface. But in choosing Comic Sans, perhaps Fabiola Gianotti was deliberately drawing on recent studies that suggest fonts that are harder to read actually help us retain information.
The war against cliché
If there’s one helpful thing to be said about making your writing clearer, it’s this: If you see a phrase you’ve heard a million times before (such as this one), replace it.
What the hell am I talking about?
A common piece of advice is to write the way you speak, the idea being that you will then be ‘freed up’ to express yourself without worrying about that intimidating blank page (or screen) before you. This may be useful to get you started, but if you send whatever you’ve written in the same spirit, look out.
The power of metaphor
But often your goal is to persuade as much as it is to inform. And that’s where metaphor is your friend. Metaphors are so prevalent they often pass unnoticed, but that doesn’t mean they don’t leave a powerful impression in the mind of your audience.
Is your website losing you business?
One of your first tasks when setting up a new business is to establish a website. Your internet presence is indispensible for advertising your products or services to the world. But what if your website is doing more harm than good?
Fifty words for snow, no word for go
We’re all familiar with the observation that such-and-such a language has no word for ‘sorry’, or ‘please’, usually made in order to cast a slur on the character of the speakers of such an unsolicitous language. Citation of words such as schadenfreude (shameful joy at the misfortune of others), serves a similar purpose in reverse – they have a word for something nasty which they must be doing all the time, but which we don’t require, as such thoughts never cross our minds.
Grammar at work – who cares?!
Put simply, when you dash off an email and send it as soon as you’ve typed the final character, without rereading it and checking for errors, you’re saying to your recipient, ‘You are not important to me’. This may be your intention, but if it isn’t, take a breath and read that message one more time before you hit ‘send’.
Applying styles in Microsoft Word
Way back in issue #2 of the Red Pony Express, we wrote about the advantages of using Microsoft Word templates to improve the presentation and usability of your written materials. However, there’s not much use in having a suite of nicely formatted templates if no one actually knows how to use them.
Red Pony wins contract with Department of Health
Red Pony is pleased to announce that we have successfully tendered to the Victorian Department of Health to provide web content services for the flagship website, the Better Health Channel.
Creeps from the deeps
Perhaps you are familiar with a common horror movie device – it’s the opposite of the ‘sudden surprise’ that startles the audience and the protagonist at the same time. This is the one where the monster/tidal wave/giant squid looms up behind the protagonist to reveal its vast immensity to the audience before the protagonist turns around to be devoured/drowned/ingested.
Mind your language
There’s a couple of different routes by which a word joins the vast English vocabulary: we enlist a Latin or Greek word to help us describe a new concept or object (the pneumatic tyre, the personal computer); or new words find us, crashing the party uninvited and ready to start meaning things all on their own.
The ‘what, how, where’ of tender writing
Last month I was invited to present at a Tender Management Roadshow in Adelaide run by the Tonkin Corporation. In my talk I spoke about the tools and processes we use at Red Pony to help our clients produce compelling and often successful tenders.
Pick your national metaphor
I was listening to a visiting American political analyst on the radio the other day talking about the differences between Australian and American political language.
To correct or not to correct
Tricky situations arise when someone uses a word in the wrong context or when it is pronounced incorrectly. We have all experienced that moment when our great story has been interrupted by someone saying something like, ‘You mean dock the boat, not park the boat, because you park cars, not boats – don’t you?’
Peter Riches at Tender Management Roadshow 2012
Red Pony principal consultant Peter Riches presents at Tender Management Roadshow 2012.
Lessons from IKEA
As I assembled a new wardrobe last weekend in the spare-room-cum-study that is soon to be my daughter’s new bedroom, I was struck by just how simple yet effective the instructions were. Perhaps more striking was the fact that they didn’t contain a single word.
Hvae you seen tihs beofre?
What are we doing when we read? We are absorbing meaning through the symbols on the page or screen. This takes greater mental effort than simply listening, although that’s an act of interpretation as well.
Think before you write
Next time you are about to launch into writing something important, metaphorically bite your tongue and consider your reader before you start writing or your message may not be read the way you intended.
Managing the email deluge
Email is the great contemporary communication blessing and curse—ubiquitous, instant … and inescapable. There’s over 300 billion of them flying round the world every single day, some of them useful, most of them spam.
Pronouns: A matter of life and death
In his recent book, The Secret Life of Pronouns, psychology professor James Pennebaker writes about how our use of pronouns reveals much about our social status, health, honesty … even our propensity to commit suicide!