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.
Beware the dangling modifier
What’s wrong with these sentences?
Yesterday, after conferring with my senior national security advisers and following extensive consultations with our coalition partners, Saddam Hussein was given one last chance. (President Bush in the Chicago Tribune, 1991)
Driving home recently, a thick pall of smoke turned out to be Deepak’s bungalow, well alight.
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.
Time to get with the program/me
Under the new dispensation of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, there are going to be a few changes. But here at Red Pony we’ll restrict our discussion to the orthographical changes (that’s ‘spelling’ to you and me).
For ‘whom’, the bell tolls
When was the last time you wrote ‘whom’? When was the last time you said it? I’ll bet the former happened more recently than the latter. As any change in the spoken language is invariably the precursor to a change in the written language, the writing has been on the wall — so to speak — for ‘whom’ for quite some time.
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.
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 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.
Writing for the web
While the goal in writing for the web is the same as for any other medium (convey your message clearly to your audience), there are a few differences to keep in mind.
Politics and the English language
In 1946, George Orwell wrote one of the most prescient and influential essays, 'Politics and the English language’. In it he asserts that lazy writing prevents critical thought and ultimately leads to a corruption of political life.