Question #4

For question #2, what did you do differently from the original post? Please outline, explain and justify what you changed & why. Essentially, what did you learn from this new topic and what did you change and why?  (8 Marks)

Now equipped with the knowledge of plain English writing for the web, I have made several changes to my initial welcoming post to ensure it is more easily understood. There are several things I have done to revise my post. Adjusting the headers, adding additional bullet points, removing unnecessary words and phrases, and overall shortening and editing the words of existing sentences. All of this is done to improve the overall effectiveness of my post. 

Firstly, what I did differently from the original post is just a few of my title headers. For example, I adjusted the following heading, “Cheap is Just The Price, Not The Effort” to “Quality at FreshFarmerYQG isn’t Jeopardized.” The newer headline has fewer words but it still conveys my message about the high quality standards of my business. The purpose of this is to ensure that the user understands my content as quickly as possible, meaning the new headline is more easily digestible than the previous one due to the higher word count. The new headline isn’t a “dumbed” down version of my headline because it still conveys the same information but more clearly. If I were to dumb down my headline, it would not be effective for my post because users want to feel appreciated. 

Secondly, I have added more lists to my post to enhance clarity. For instance, I added this to my new post:

We understand that you live in difficult times as the cost of necessities has gone up

• Cost of Groceries has gone up 
• Gas pricing has increased  
• Higher inflation levels than ever before

The three items in this list are triggers of my audience as such, having them more visually accessible will ensure that they take notice immediately. Initially, I wanted to explain in detail about these triggers in the list but I opted to just implement a list instead because I know that users won’t care enough to read long text. 

Thirdly, in my revised post, I tried to avoid unnecessary words and phrases. Specifically, from my previous post, I omitted the title, “LEAVE MORE and SPEND LESS with FRESHFRARMERYQG.” Reflecting on this initial decision, It is not an effective use in the title as there is no context. Furthermore, I have information regarding the affordability of my business, therefore making this phrase redundant. As discussed in class, first impressions are important, therefore, starting the post with a phrase with no context is not ideal. This is why I changed it to, “Who is FreshFarmerYQG”. This at least tells the user the general idea of the post which is for introductory purposes. 

Next, to effectively convey my messaging and enhance readability, I have reworded some sentences to be smaller. For instance, I have changed and reworked this sentence in my post: 

Finally, with the logic behind shortening the length of my header titles, I decided to shorten this sentence because I want to more quickly convey my message. The message I’m trying to convey in this case is that we’re a new affordable grocery store. To better convey this message, I removed some of the jargon such as the names of the big grocery brands. Users already know the big brand names so it is futile to include them in this writing as it’ll seem redundant and only adds unnecessary length to the length. Furthermore, the new revised sentence has a total of 20 words. I did this on purpose because it is the ideal word length of 15-20 words that we discussed in class for readability. 

As a result of all these changes, I think the clarity and readability of this new post have vastly improved over the last one. Due to the implementation of writing in plain English writing, I think new users will now more easily understand my content, find what they’re looking for, and take something away more effectively than last time.