Question 3 – Part B

b. What was the most challenging aspect of applying the F-Pattern and Plain English writing principles? How did you overcome it? (5 Marks) 

When it came to applying both the F Pattern and the principles of plain English writing to my work, I found that the most challenging aspect of this was figuring out how I could balance simplicity and being rather concise with making sure my writing was still able to clearly communicate the information I was providing about my bakery in a way that was effective and not lacking clarity. I knew specifically that I wanted my written introductory content to align with my Ava’s Lil Bakeshoppe objectives and branding alongside sound as appealing to my audience of potential converting consumers, all while making sure I was keeping my work as clear, brief, concise and easy to scan as possible for my audience of readers. From my understanding, sometimes my writing in regard to my business (especially within my original introduction to my business) can be way too descriptive and not employ the principles that are involved within plain english writing. This is mostly an issue because people like me who are passionate about their business want to make it sound special through describing as many facets of the business as possible however it is important to consider how when it comes to written content that is intended for readers, using a large amount of overly descriptive language or technical terms and jargon can make a message much less direct, easy and quick to read through which will make the writing much harder for readers to digest/process which makes it redundant and ineffective. 

An additional aspect of my challenge in relation to the F Pattern, was not writing in larger paragraphs like I am used to for more academic pieces of written content. Instead of writing like this, I needed to balance keeping my writing effective for my business and fulfilling the actual purpose of my writing (as mentioned already) while making sure I was able to get my point across using sort of a “less is more” concept to produce effective yet easily understood content that considers the amount of time readers will be willing and able to spend reading alongside how “scannable” the content is. I really needed to consider how my readers would move across and down my webpage to gather the information which my content is aiming to provide. I understood that the F Pattern was effective because of the fact that it recognises that the most important content should be front loaded to ensure it is read and that “Users spend 80% of their time viewing the left half of the page”. Therefore I knew I needed to challenge what I was used to doing in terms of academic writing and long paragraphs by shortening my points to only feature key information without any extra or unnecessary words/descriptors so that readers could get through my writing quicker but still gather what my information is and what purpose it fulfils for them. Overall, the most challenging aspect of applying both the F Pattern and plain English writing to my work was steering away from my usual academic writing habits to ensure I only featured the most important information within short pieces of text and bullet points that are created using a structure that was easily scannable. 

RESOURCES:

1.  Briscoe, F Pattern Refresher (W26).pdf, Slide 4