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.
Cite management
All writing which makes claims based on available information requires citation. To help use citations effectively, it’s important to understand why we use them and how to use citations appropriately in context.
How to interview a subject matter expert
In the previous issue I wrote about thought leadership and offered some tips to help you share your specialist knowledge with others. This time around I want to share some advice for interviewing someone to help draw out their expertise.
Neologisms: language upcycling through the ages
Unsurprisingly, neologisms are often the by-product of a cultural or technological shift. In the case of the pandemic, reactionary linguistic terms spawned rapidly to cope with an intensifying global crisis.
NZ a step closer to making plain language law
The New Zealand Government is looking to pass legislation that will make it a legal requirement to use plain language for official documents and websites. It’s time we did the same in Australia.
How to write a great thought leadership article
Writing an article, web page or blog post where you share your expertise is a chance to provide interested readers with information useful to them, while also building your profile as an expert in your field.
The difference between copyediting and proofreading
When you’re outsourcing a content project, what services do you need and how do you tap into the right level of editorial expertise?
What’s in a place name?
Although many of us remain armchair travellers due to COVID-19 restrictions, the landscape of Australian language is constantly shifting.
Keeping up with language trends
For most Australians, 2020 will be forever remembered as the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the language geeks among us, it also marked the launch of 3 new national style guides.
Buzzwords: we love to hate them but what can they teach us?
Buzzwords have a knack for insinuating themselves into collective consciousness. More so than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic where terms such as ‘bubble’, ‘lockdown’, ‘roadmap’ are already so ingrained in our ‘new normal’ that we have come to revere or revile them.
Sign languages evolve just like any other language
The daily COVID update from our national leaders and top health officials has been a feature of this pandemic. We’re now so accustomed to seeing an Auslan interpreter at these pressers it seems strange to think that it wasn’t so long ago that their presence was an exception rather than the norm.
Taking the pain out of annual reports
While your annual report might have to be compiled yearly, that doesn’t mean the same people will be involved each time. Document any lessons from the process that will make it easier next time around for all those involved.
A darker shade of light
Oxymorons are figures of speech that are designed to create a rhetorical effect (e.g. humour, irony, emphasis) or provoke readers to think more deeply about a paradox.
No place for hope
When you’re applying for grants, awards and tenders, it’s no time to be modest, uncertain or even loud. Simply make your claims, back them up and be rigorous. The rest may well be fill. Even if your application does not get what you would’ve hoped for, assessors will thank you for making their jobs easier.
How do you write like you’re running out of time?
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s account of the life of American founding father, Alexander Hamilton, has won almost every award imaginable – including a Pulitzer Prize. The rapid-fire vocal delivery of rap and hip-hop enables Miranda to convey a lot of information in each song without ever sounding like a history lesson.
The smell of a message
And right there is one thing that scent marketers have learned at a cost: smells evoke memories, and a smell that appeals to one demographic may put off another.
Being more productive by doing nothing
Being continually connected to your email and phone between meetings not only fills your day, it also makes it difficult to think beyond the immediate demands on your time. The problem is potentially more acute now that many of us are working more hours from home due to the current pandemic, making it even harder to completely switch off.
Why I’ll persevere with reading poetry
Have you ever read a poem that’s left you with a sense of unease or ambiguity because you found it obscure or open-ended? Or because you felt you didn’t quite get a message that you should’ve gotten?
Maintaining your language style guide
A language style guide specifies how people should write for your organisation – how formal or casual the tone, any preferences for certain terms, whether or not to use Oxford commas … it’s effectively the language equivalent of a design style guide that specifies such things as the colours of the logo and the fonts to use.
The costly consequences of typos
Make a point of proofreading your communications, always. Build in the time for it. If necessary, read your work aloud (or get Microsoft Word to do it for you). Another option is to change the font of your text to trick your mind into thinking the content is unfamiliar and fresh. Many simple errors can be caught this way.
How COVID-19 is changing the way we work
The pandemic has accelerated work trends that might have otherwise taken years to become common practice. Fortuitously, many of the technologies required to make this possible have matured at just the right time, including the availability of broadband internet and powerful portable computers combined with ubiquitous teleconferencing applications like Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams.