Plain Style Writing and How it Advocates for Mental Health

By Garrett O. 

         So, what is “plain style” writing, and what impact does it play on mental health resources? Plain style writing uses active voice (instead of passive), simple sentence structures, little jargon, and tends to have a low reading difficulty. By using plain style writing in mental health resources, a wider audience is able to understand and implement good mental health practices. New knowledge can do no good if it doesn’t reach its intended audience.

The article that I will be discussing is titled “Your Child’s Mental Health” from the Canadian Pediatric Society, which is made up of more than 3,000 licensed pediatricians. More specifically, it is published on CaringforKids.cps.ca, which is a resource designed to inform parents on a wide range of potential health problems in children. The way the information is presented and delivered is very straightforward. Unlike many online health resources, Caring for Kids tries to make complicated information accessible to a wide range of people—specifically parents and caregivers of children. The only tradeoff is that the article doesn’t dive too deep into mental disorders; it is mainly focused on covering all bases. A sentence from their mission statement reads: “The information on Caring for Kids should not be used as a substitute for medical care and advice” (Caring for Kids, 2017). If a parent is seeking information on a particular diagnosis that was already given, they would have to find a different article that is better tailored to their needs.

            Unlike a peer-reviewed research article, “Your Child’s Mental Health” is not designed as a professional resource. Not everyone is a doctor, and not every problem warrants a trip to the hospital. The website specifically states that parents are the intended audience of the information provided. Parents seeking the article might be concerned about their child’s mental health, or simply just curious about how they can help their child through life’s unpredictability. With an intended audience this large, accessibility is extremely important.

One aspect of the article’s accessibility is the use of list format. For example, the main points are listed in colored text, which are then followed by bold sub-points, eventually leading to bullet-pointed lists. Because of this, a reader can quickly scroll through information that isn’t useful to them. The word-choice is also very reader-friendly. The authors use dashes and parenthesis to define content that might be unfamiliar to the reader. One example reads: “This person—often a parent or other family member—is someone your child spends a lot of time with and knows they can turn to when they need help.” Even though the definition of “this person” was defined in a previous sentence, the author wants to make sure that the audience isn’t confused on the content.

Another important accessibility strategy used is the question format of the headings. After giving brief reassurance of the affect good parenting can have on a child, a bold heading asks, “How can I nurture my child’s mental health?” This pattern is continued throughout the article, with the last headline asking, “Where do I go for help?” After each question is asked, the article proceeds to provide clearly written bullet-pointed answers. This ensures that parents are learning the process of helping their child in a linear fashion. Each new question that they formulate while reading is swiftly answered in the following section.

After a parent has finished reading the article, they might want to dive deeper into similar resources. They could also be asking, “Where do I go from here?” The Canadian Pediatric Society provides resources following the article with this in mind. They have direct links to videos that explain the information more in-depth, and other articles explaining how to spark conversation with your child regarding their mental health. In addition to this, they have a handful of links to connect parents directly with psychologists for specific diagnoses and treatment.

We have now established how the content is able to be so accessible. But why is this important? As you have probably heard before, there is a serious mental health crisis affecting every corner of the world. According to the World Health Organization, the prevalence of mental health conditions has risen over 13% in the last ten years. Suicide is also second on the list of causes of death in 15–29-year-olds (WHO, 2022). Even if an individual is able to manage suicidal ideations, chronic physical health problems stem from poor mental health. Mental health struggles don’t discriminate. That is why it is vital for the information in this article to be easily accessible to a large audience. Active listening and acceptance are emphasized repeatedly, which could be all a child needs to know that they are safe and understood. “Your Child’s Mental Health” gives a parent necessary tools to help their child while encouraging a doctor’s visit for more complex problems that a family might not be equipped to deal with alone. If it was written in a wordier format, parents might misinterpret this information or fail to understand it altogether.

It is far too easy to get lost in medical terminology and coded language. Leading with compassion is essential in a child’s development. Very often a child is just as fearful as their parents that something might be wrong. Reminding them that they have an advocate during difficult times can make a world of difference, even if a parent can’t take all their pain away. When considering how important good mental health practices are, it is without question that plain language resources like “Your Child’s Mental Health” should be widely accessible to people everywhere. Just as official style and coded language have their own place in textbooks and doctor’s offices, plain style should have just as much space in the hands of the every-day family. 

The Downfall of an Argument through Official Style: Race and Postcoloniality

By Jon Brueggeman

Introduction

            In The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory, an unfamiliar reader would have trouble finding a comprehensible sentence—sort of like finding hay in a proverbial needle-stack. No chapter exemplifies this needless complexity quite like Chapter 12: Race and Postcoloniality. For a subject so crucial to both literary analysis and culture within our society, it is discouraging to see the official style overshadow the important themes within the chapter. Rather than expand the audience of the subject or provide a clear lens to view literary works, the chapter distorts its message through convoluted language. The chapter hits the ground running with unnecessary wordiness in its opening sentences:

            Like all other fields of study and/or modes of critique in contemporary humanities, ‘postcoloniality’ and ‘race’ defy easy definition or summation. Whether conceived of singly or in tandem, each term holds together, in sometimes uneasy if not confidential co-existence, a diverse range of critics working from a vast array of theoretical, ideological, aesthetic, historical, and regional perspectives. What I present here is a particular partisan argument in the full knowledge that someone working in the same field(s) would, in all likelihood, present the argument differently, if not present a different argument altogether. (Amoko 131)

            What this entire opening paragraph says is essentially: “Race and postcoloniality are heavily debated topics. This is my opinion; it is not necessarily fact.” But the use of the official style purposely clouds the intention of the opening paragraph—making it difficult for the audience to understand what the argument is or why it is being made. Further, in that entire paragraph, we do not know what the argument being made is. The author never states it. By using the official style, the author conceals his argument to the benefit of no-one, except those who deem the paper itself credible because of the style alone.

            Don’t take my word for it, though. The author knows this as well. In fact, the final line of the opening paragraph deftly summarizes the excerpt above: “In short, I want to convey the sense that postcoloniality and race are sites of contestation and debate rather than clearly defined and readily summarized fields” (Amoko 131). Amoko summarized the entirety of his opening paragraph in one sentence, a sentence that is much more cohesive and direct than the opening paragraph before it. So, why does he still include the opening paragraph if only to summarize it better later on? This is the official style at its absolute worst. Fancy words and subordinate clauses that add (essentially) nothing to the grand scheme of the argument but are included nonetheless because they add superficial credibility to the argument. Complexity does not equate to depth.

Race and Official Style

We don’t have to look far for another detrimental use of the official style. This chapter has a tendency to introduce a compelling idea and then over-complicate it or in reverse order. Take the upcoming excerpt, for example. This passage intends to establish that: race is a socially constructed, dated concept that is ironically still involved in every moment of everyday life. Seems like a fairly simple concept. Let’s see how Amoko describes this idea:

Race turns out to be a false idea that has had, and continues to exert, powerful global consequences even after its fundamental falseness has been recognized.

Okay, this is wordy, but I’m with you so far.

There can be no question that race (that is, the belief that human beings can be divided into a limited number of morphological categories) and racism (that is, the discrimination on the basis of race) remain two of the principal forces organizing the modern world.

The added parenthesis here make this passage a maze to work through, and they add absolutely nothing to the overarching sentence. They simply define race and racism—things that were already defined earlier on and are most likely common knowledge to the audience members. Try reading that sentence without the added definitions. It still repeats information seen before it, but it does not sacrifice readability in its redundance.

(Race is a necessary condition for, but at least in theory not an inevitable cause of, racism.)

To me, this statement is contradictory. Race doesn’t cause racism? But…you just said that race is a necessary condition for racism? How can race be necessary condition but not a cause? It would seem to me that the act of placing people into races causes racist ideologies. This idea leaves me with questions that are compelling, but the author does not address this statement again. I do not understand the inclusion of the statement besides adding to the word count—it is a sentence that is guilty of muddying the waters and not much else. Perhaps I am just not understanding the sentence…maybe that suggestion speaks for itself.

In much the same way that everyone is thought to ‘have’ a gender, sexuality, and nationality, everyone is thought to ‘have’ a race.

Makes sense to me. Although, the comparison between nationality and sexuality/gender is unfounded because nationality is a defined characteristic (where someone was born) whereas sexuality and gender are fluid characteristics. Nonetheless, this is a succinct claim that everyone reading can understand and agree with. Notably, it is also the sentence with the least amount of official style strategies used.

For a long time, this way of thinking about race was validated by mainstream intellectual opinion; to deploy the sexist vocabulary of a bygone era, the ‘races of man’ were for more than two centuries thought to constitute a legitimate science. But the consensus of intellectual opinion today, both in the humanities and the sciences, seems to be that race is an irredeemably dubious concept: its boundaries are notoriously unreliable and its identity categories (‘white’, ‘black’, ‘brown’, etc.) are internally incoherent.

In a terribly roundabout way, Amoko is saying: we think of race as socially constructed today, but, in the past, we thought of race as biological. There is quite a bit of jargon and wordiness sprinkled in the quote to dilute its central message. The added words and distorted clarity have the benefit of seeming more credible but have the adverse effect of making the passage nearly unreadable. This is how the passage concludes:

Race is socially constructed… [despite this] everyone is still thought to have a race.

If you’ll recall, this section began with the idea that Amoko’s passage is trying to say: race is a socially constructed, dated concept that is ironically still involved in every moment of everyday life. It took all of those quotations and complex descriptions before we finally arrived at the idea he is trying to address. As I mentioned, this is the official style ruining an otherwise compelling subject. Instead of focusing on the content of the essay, the reader is so focused on trying to decipher what the author is trying to say that the concrete message is lost in the weeds. In my opinion, there is nothing, in terms of content, within this passage that justifies its use of official style. This passage could be rephrased in plain style, and it would be better for it. Nothing besides semantics would be lost in the translation. The needless complexities would be removed and the significant, central message could rise out of the revision like a phoenix from the ashes.

Conclusion

            In text examples aside, let’s get to the root of the problem with official style in this piece. The problem is: the use of official style discourages potential audience members and clouds the message the author attempts to convey. It is no question that every person deals with race on a day-to-day basis. The concept may not be apparent to some people (or more apparent for others), but everybody deals with race and its repercussions in all situations. This is the reason that the official style’s use in this essay pains me. I can imagine the diverse and infinite audience that this piece could relate to, but, sadly, those people will never get the chance to read this or interpret its true meaning because of the language that it uses. The ideas of race and postcoloniality transcend critical theory. This is a topic that could apply to everyone, but most people do not have the academic proficiency to decipher the message within. It’s sad because the message is universal in its content but completely exclusive in its execution.

            It’s important to note that I don’t believe Amoko’s intention was to maliciously exclude audience members. I assume that most uses of the official style come from a place of familiarity with the material and wanting to establish credibility. He attempts to analyze the complexities of race and post coloniality to the degree that he is familiar with the subject. It would be more effective to increase the audience appeal of the content because of the importance of the information. By using numerous prepositional phrases, intense jargon and drawn-out sentence openings, Amoko limits his audience to a select few members of his field when the piece is much better suited to introduce critical theory students to the realm of race and postcoloniality as well as its significance to the realm of literature.

 I’m sure he could find a way to say basically the same claims as stated in his essay in the plain style, but, realistically, it would be harder for his ideas to be published. This is the downfall of official style. When the style your ideas are conveyed in becomes the focal point rather than your ideas themselves, your argument folds in on itself. Not for a lack of merit, though. Official style pieces have merits of their own and significant uses of the style that enhance their message. It is important to not lose track of your central idea for the sake of being deemed “credible”.

Plain Style is Needed in Bureaucratic and Medical Writing

By Olivia Revels

The plain style is vital when it is used to explain a service that most people in the U.S. will need.  I looked at an article about Medicare that was written by AARP or American Association of Retired Persons in 2021.  Medicare is a national health insurance program that is mainly used by individuals 65 years or older and by younger people with disabilities.  It is a commonly used service in the U.S. that many have used and/or want to use when they are eligible for the program.  However, it can be quite difficult to understand and know if you are eligible to apply, how to apply, when to apply, and why this service may be a good fit for you.  It can be especially difficult because the text surrounding Medicare contains elements from the official style that reflects the bureaucracy and the medical field.  An example of the way Medicare is defined from Investopedia in 2022 is “Medicare is a U.S. government health insurance program that subsidizes healthcare services.  The plan covers people age 65 or older, younger people who meet specific eligibility criteria, and individuals with certain diseases.”  I don’t know about you, but I do not understand what subsidize means, let alone what exactly Medicare is from this definition. 

That is why this article from AARP is so important for understanding Medicare when put into a plain style of writing.  I want to explore the elements of plain style in the article and then get into a discussion on how this article increases accessibility and assumes competence of the audience while using the plain style.

The elements of plain style are present throughout the article.  This includes things like simple sentence structure, less prepositional phrases, the use of active voice, and when jargon is presented, it is explained clearly.  The simple sentence structure is present for a majority of the article and especially with the title being “What is Medicare?”  There are subsections of the article titled as “Taking control of your health care” and “Medicare adapts to the Coronavirus.”  All of these reflect a simpler sentence structure that has fewer words, identifies a clear subject and the verb is tied to that subject.  Also, the average number of words per sentence is much lower at 18.42 than the text I looked at with official style with 24.51 words per sentence. 

There are significantly less prepositional phrases used and instead the sentence format emphasizes the active voice over the passive voice.  Out of the entire article there were only about six prepositional phrases and were still simple in structure, for example “in the hospital,” “in recent years” and “into the decisions.”  These are not more than a few words long and have no specific jargon or complicated vocabulary being used in them that allows for the clear presence of the plain style. 

Another element of the plain style here is the structure of using active voice in a “subject + verb” format quite often in this article.  This format also helps eliminate the use of noun substitutes.  An example of this is “You need to pay attention to all of Medicare’s parts.”  At the very beginning of the sentence, we see “you need” which is clearly the “subject + verb” format of active voice.  More examples of this format are “Medicare is,” “enrollees cope,” “the federal government said,” “Medicare beneficiaries will not,” etc.  There are many more, but these are just a few to show how recurrent they are in the article. 

The last element I will discuss is jargon in the article and how it is explained.  The first term is Medicare and is portrayed in the first paragraph as “What is Medicare?  For more than 55 years, it’s been the program that older Americans and people with disabilities turn to for their health care coverage.”  The jargon is Medicare and immediately after it is mentioned, the next sentence provides an explanation of what it is.  This allows the reader to clearly understand what that term is and understand it for the rest of the article.  The same concept repeats with other jargon in the article.  The word was used, then there is an explanation in the next sentence or so for the reader to easily have access to that information. 

Now that we have looked at all these elements of the plain style, we can get into how they have made the article much more accessible.  When the plain style elements and strategies are used, this article is no longer impossible to read.  Someone would be able to understand what is being said without having to research other definitions and explanations.  This widens the audience reading this and using the information since they could comprehend it.  Other elements beyond comprehension for this article’s accessibility include that it had a Spanish version of the article.  This way native Spanish speakers could access the same information with no complications.  Another reason for this article’s great accessibility is that it is available to read without a paid subscription. 

The last element of this article’s accessibility is how it assumes competence of its target audience.  The target audience of this article is mainly the elderly and disabled individuals.  Many people hold negative stereotypes surrounding the competence of elderly and disabled individuals and the plain style.  These stereotypes assume that they cannot understand the information being presented and need to have it explained to them in a derogatory way that assumes they are incompetent.  However, this article ignores those and goes beyond writing in a way that is accessible and inclusive.  Mainly using the plain style, we see a form of writing that converts the normally confusing and complicated governmental, insurance and medical writing into something much more efficient.  An example of this in the article is:

You'll need to do some homework before you start assessing options and picking plans. Make a list of your doctors and decide how important it is to you that you can continue seeing them once you are on Medicare. Also make a list of any medications you take so you can make sure any prescription drug plan you select will meet your needs.

We see commands being made to the audience with “make a list” and “decide” throughout this paragraph.  The use of commands shows that the article is assuming the competence of its audience which is dissimilar from the societal norms associated with ageism and ableism.  Also, the language used is specific yet understandable.  We can understand that we need to be planning, looking at doctors, and taking stock of medications before taking any next steps. 

Overall, this article applies strategies from the plain style, increases accessibility and assumes competence to be inclusive of all individuals.  The topic of Medicare is complicated and confusing, so the use of plain style is essential for readers to understand the information presented.  Its increased accessibility and assumption of competence prevents exclusion of certain readers based on their education, native language, and/or identities.  This article is a great example of how the plain style can be used to benefit a broad range of people on a subject that many need to be aware of but have little or no help with. 

Become an Artist in 15 Step (In Plain English

 

By Olivia B.

Behind the Instructions

Plain style is a necessary choice for an author when their piece requires clear, concise information. The article, How to Draw a Rose, is one of those pieces that needs to be carefully constructed using plain style. Written by Monika Zagrobelna, a polish artist, the article is a step-by-step guide to drawing a rose. It was published on the Evatotuts+ website, design.tutsplus.com, where anyone can go to take free or paid courses in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign, as well as check out tutorials for different types and styles of art. It is not exclusive, as many of their resources do not require a fee and pop up on google after searching for simple art tutorials. This article, for example, was the first link that came up when I googled “how to draw a rose.”

            Due to the accessibility of the article, the main audience is probably filled with members of the general public who are just looking for basic instructions to draw a picture. It is likely that these people don’t have much background in art and are in search of something simple either to doodle or to include in a larger project. Because “general public” is such a broad category, there are varying ages, knowledge levels, and abilities that will be accessing this article. Some of those people might have an extensive background in art, while others have none.

Stylist Choices

It is clear that this article is written in plain style for a handful of reasons. First of all, the piece teaches readers how to draw a rose through active voice. Sentences start with actions words like “draw,” “start,” and “connect.” They address the reader and give clear directions for what to do next. It also uses clear and basic terminology. There isn’t any jargon that the general public wouldn’t know or be able to figure out easily, and they explain the words that can't be avoided, such as "shading." The piece doesn’t appear to be lying by omission or hiding biases, as it is just a basic set of instructions, however it might be a way to get users hooked on their site and make them more money.

Simpler Isn’t Always Better

Though there are many reasons why this plain style is the appropriate choice for this piece, some aspects of plain style might negatively impact its success. To start, it might seem oversimplified to a person who has a vast background or education in art. Because some people do put a lot of time, effort, and money into acquiring artistic skills, it might seem insulting that this website is claiming to teach an individual how to do art in this "dumbed down" way. The art industry is one that can sometimes struggle to get respect, and sites like this might be contributing to that issue.

Another issue that plain style creates in this situation is a lack of information. The article claims that by following the instructions, the reader should have drawn a beautiful rose. This might be true in some cases, but for a reader without any art experience, the brief instructions don’t really explain everything. For example, the later steps talk about shading to add dimension, but don’t explain how exactly to do that. Step 14 says to “add a subtle texture to the illuminated parts. The darker your rose, the darker you can go here.” This is written very plainly, giving directions in active voice, however, there isn’t much explanation of how to do this. If the reader understands texture and shading, the instructions are very straightforward. However, if the reader doesn’t know what adding “subtle texture” means, the lack of explanation won’t make any sense.

Conclusion

Despite the few downfalls of plain style, I do think it is the best choice for this type of article. The article is straightforward, well organized, and easily accessible to anyone who might need to quickly know how to draw a rose. It does get the job done because if readers simply follow the instructions, they should successfully draw a rose—and that is the goal of the piece

Official Style: Ain’t No Style o’ Mine?

By Branden Schultz

Official Style catches a lot of flak for being full of sentences crammed with too many words, phrases, and terms (half of which are incomprehensibly complicated), and little time to breathe in between, let alone process the information you’re cramming down your throat. The style gets discredited for being exhausting, and at times downright unhelpful to its audience. To make things worse, sometimes the topic isn’t even complicated- but how the author handles it sure is. However, this style is not the useless mountain of garbage that some decry it to be. No, official style can be used to raise one's professional appearance- to raise their persuasiveness and eloquently raise points in ways that the plain and creative styles would not be able to. The truth is that the official style is not the enemy- it is a simple tool that is useful in the right contexts, and has pitfalls and tropes that its writers may fall into, just like any other style .

            The context of a text changes so many aspects of its quality- how can a text be judged if its: effective, clear, persuasive, informative, entertaining, enjoyable, popular, or credible, without understanding why, when, and where it was written for whom? Is the text a persuasive essay asking the city to install more benches, or a fictional short story of a cat trying to find its milk? Will the President of the United States be reading this, or a Kindergartener? In 1801, or 2016? Obviously, the tone, word choice, and exact subject matter will change depending on the answers to each of these questions. Without context, there is no answer to the quality of a text. There may be an inherent personal bias towards a specific style, but this is not an objective assessment of the text’s value.

            But it’s easier to believe it when you see it, I know. So let’s look at an example. Fundamental Undemocratic Values in Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers: How to Make Upper Secondary School Students More Self-aware of Their Fundamental Democratic Values by Sebastian Forsman, a student at the Stockholm University, shows an effective use of the style. And once again, the context behind this text shows why it is an effective use of the official style.  Forsman wrote this to the administrators of the English department at Stockholm University. He hoped that the thesis paper would convince the administrators to add Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers to the department’s list of required books for students. Forsman wanted to raise awareness of fundamental democratic values within the student body. His audience (the administrators) is a busy, intelligent group. Stockholm University has an acceptance rate of only 24%- this is not an easily accessible university. They need a compelling argument to change the school's curriculum- a simple “please and thank you” approach just won’t do. Also, this is a group of people that Forsman is writing for- they have separate ideologies and beliefs that must all be appeased. But it is also a small group of people, meaning that Forsman is not reaching for wide reaching circulation, but instead is trying to convince a specific and niche audience. The more detail that Forsman can elaborate on quickly and concisely, the better.

Admittedly, I was hesitant about the title’s length at first. With twenty-three (23) words, I thought it was a sign of excessively worded passages to come. But the title is perfect for Forsman’s audience, because it is exactly what his argument is. Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers stresses undemocratic values that upper secondary students should be aware of, to raise their understanding of the democratic values that should be preserved. What is the best way to raise the understanding? Add Starship Troopers to the school’s curriculum. ‘Fundamental’ is used twice in the title alone, creating repetition and stressing the absolute necessity of the values that Forsman touches on throughout the paper. Even the title is employing devices to help persuade his audience.

In the paper itself, Forsman speaks plainly, despite using prepositions and stringing clauses together within one sentence. He also maintains a clear organization throughout his thesis, helping the reader maintain a sense of direction while reading the piece, and also helping navigate through it for specific details- exactly what his intended audience would want. There is a table of contents, there are headers, and quotes receive their own margins for emphasis. The thesis paper looks incredibly presentable and official, again catering to his audience’s expectations. Complicated terms are given their own sections. They are broken down and explained, before being used seamlessly to expand on the importance of his thesis paper- why Starship Troopers should be part of the curriculum.

Forsman also speaks in a sequential manner. He relies on previous elaborations to carry new arguments ahead. Forsman writes, “Since Starship Troopers has been chosen as the teaching material to achieve the aims above, the first step would be to analyze its didactic potential. This concept is borrowed from Malin Alkestrand and her doctoral thesis on how fantasy novels could be used to problematize fundamental values in school (67-76)” (Forsman 11). A lot of information is conveyed in just these two sentences. “Since Starship Troopers has been chosen,” emphasizes that this novel specifically will “achieve the aims above,”. Here, Forsman calls back to pre-listed aims of his article, which he examined earlier. Finally, Forsman moves forward, stating “the first step would be to analyze its didactic potential.” Forsman, knowing that ‘didactic potential’ is likely a foreign or otherwise complicated concept, he elaborates on the concept’s origin (and its creator’s credibility in one concise move). The rest of Forsman’s paper is written in a similarly sequential matter- relying on past information to move forward.

Forsman’s paper has a Gunning Fog Index of 15.5, and a Flesch Reading Ease Score of 39.28. Each word has about 5 characters to it, while each sentence has about 23-24 words to it, on average. These are longer sentences (ironically each being about the same length as his title), but the language inside is only complicated if you haven’t read Forsman's earlier passages- in no small part due to his sequential style of elaboration.

In short, don’t hate the game, hate the player. Words never wanted to be complicated; they can’t want anything. They’re words. Instead, look at the author. Look at their purpose in reading. And look at who they’re writing to. Understand where they came from, and what they tried to make of their text. And then, stop hating the player. You just might not have been the original audience, and that same original audience might have thought that it was one hell of a read. There’s a time and place for everything, and even though official style isn’t the style of mine,  it is a style of mine.

The Importance of Grants and How to Write One

By Caitlin Olson

Many people believe that grants are just “free money” which is essentially what it is, but they are also so much more than that. They require a lot of preparation if an organization wants to receive one, and grants allow people to pursue projects they wouldn’t have the chance to pursue otherwise. Writing grants give organizations a chance to improve their facilities, provide educational opportunities, social programs, research, and so much more. For example, Darrell R. Jones submitted a grant proposal to the Ohio Office of Criminal Services (OCJS) trying to increase the public safety of the City of Summerville by improving the overall physical fitness of the officers of the Summerville Police Department. The Summerville Police department is experiencing a high incidence of cardiovascular and musculo-skeletal problems among its sworn officers, resulting in fewer officers on the street. The use of official style is evident throughout this whole proposal where it starts with a slow sentence opener as well as it continues to us passive voice. “It is proposed that a fitness center be developed where Summerville officers can regularly exercise” (Summary) Throughout the grant proposal it talks about what the problem is, the objectives they wish to complete, the project description, and their budget so that the funder can dictate what their organization is about. The use of passive voice is crucial so that that there is no emotional connection between the grant writer and the reader so that the main points of the argument are clearly stated.

Some important advantages that a grant provides are that they are an investment when other sources of capital are unavailable to initiate or expand programs, products, or services. Additionally, unlike loans, grants do not have to be repaid and it enhances brand prestige, visibility, status, and credibility. In the objectives section of the proposal they used a lot of jargon so that the writer seems more credible to the topic as well as showcase the overall necessity to pay attention to the issue at hand.  If the City of Summerville receives the funding, they are asking they will complete the following objectives: Reducing the use of employee sick leave for cardio-vascular problems by 20%, reducing the use of employee sick leave for musculo-skeletal problems by 40%, and lower the average resting pulse of unfit employees by five beats per minute. If they succeed in receiving this grant it will increase the health and fitness level of the officers as well as reduce their time off of work which is inevitably good for the department and community.

Unfortunately, many businesses do not end up getting funded. Common mistakes that organizations make are value inflation, no go-to-market strategy, the grant is too long or too technical, etc. As far as value inflation, investors will judge whether your organization is valuable. They want you to lay out the facts such as the problem, your solution, the market size, how you will sell it, and how well you will stay ahead of competitors. When it comes to not have a market strategy it could inevitably doom your organization all together. Investors want you to explain the sales, marketing, and distribution strategy of your company. You must explain how you have already generated customer interest and how you will leverage this experience through a cost-effective go-to-market strategy. Investors want to know exactly who they are giving their money away to and determine whether they have a plan. Lastly, investors are very busy and they read multiple grant proposals a year. They favour grant writers who demonstrate the ability to convey the most important elements of a complex idea in the least amount of words possible. Also, grant proposals are typically filled with technical details and investors only care about technology when it solves a big problem that people will pay for, can be implemented on a reasonable budget, and can be protected through patents or other means. So, using this information the Summerville police department used a lot of jargon as well as complex sentences to help them seem credible to the investor.

The Summerville police department did not get funded because of the magnitude of the project that they were asking for. However, the funder can fund the maintenance of the project once the major objectives have been accomplished. In consequence of not receiving funding to help increase the health of the Summerville police officers the chance of illness increases as well as the chances of criminal victimization increases when the officers are off work. Another possible consequence of being understaffed for health-related reasons is that the remaining officers at work are less likely to be able to handle the assigned calls causing the community to be in danger. One Study (Fisk, 1988) shows that the response time for police-relate 911 calls is significantly longer when shifts are staffed at below recommended length. In the most extreme cases, this could even be an issue of life or death.

The real point of grants is to rally the necessary resources to help an organization fulfill its purpose. A grant is a tool organization’s use to address issues within the community. While grants impact the organizations they disperse to, they will more significantly affect community as a whole. The Summerville police department grant is crucial because it affects the whole community and not just the health of the police officers. If the grant writer explains that they would be safer if they received funding, people would be less likely to be scared to leave their homes. Grants are an important tool that could benefit any organization and even impact the whole community. When written correct grant proposals could provide educational opportunities, improve facilities in the community, and even help communities be more prepared in emergency situations.

Supreme Court Case Analysis

By Matthew Nelson

      The official style is ever present in the scholarly literature that we have become accustomed to reading and writing for college or for our professional lives.  Some areas of literature have come to expect a higher degree of intensity from the official style than others.  The official style is a key aspect of writing in professional settings because it helps generate credibility and authority through linguistic manipulation and diction.  The legal community for example, is often more official in the texts that are produced than writing areas where less intensive diction is acceptable and does not detract from the credibility of the literature itself.  US v. Lopez is a Supreme Court case analysis I wrote to examine the positions of both the dissent and majority and then align myself with the side that I felt best represented the intentions of the Constitution.  In this case review I used an extensive degree of official strategies for the same reasons that the official style is so prevalent in education and professional settings, because it made me appear more credible than if I were to explain all the same points I made in a way that everyone could understand.

          In the case review, as I had mentioned, I use a number of the official style strategies that one would expect from a document pertaining to the legal formalities of constitutional law.  Below is an excerpt from the case review that I fell best represents the overall diction and style used in the paper.

“It is my position that in this case the majority was correct in their interpretation of the Constitution and in particular the Interstate Commerce Clause.  While the dissent did make a logical argument about the connection between education and interstate commerce and the relationship between firearms and education, far too much speculation was involved in their reasoning.  Had there been empirical evidence in United States v. Lopez to conclude that by bringing a gun to class Alfonso Lopez had substantially affected the education of his peers and that in turn damaged the economy of the area there may have been a case to be made.  As it stood however, I feel the majority made the correct decision.  One particular area that I felt to be especially compelling was the discussion about the possibility of the substantial effects doctrine to get out of hand.  I agreed wholeheartedly with Justice Thomas that such a liberally interpreted doctrine when compounded with the aggregation principle could enable Congress to significantly impose on state legislative jurisdictions and violate the principle of federalism.”

From reading this it is fairly easy to discern that I was writing with the intention of implementing official style strategies, or at least attempting to.  To kick off the excerpt, for example, I began with the strategy ‘slow sentence opening.’  At the time I was far less familiar with the nuances of the official style than I am currently, so the implementation of this strategy was likely an attempt to extend my paper to fit a page requirement.  The page requirement itself though is a way of encouraging the use of official strategies like that in practice.  Another official style strategy that I had found myself using to a high degree in this case review was the complex sentence structure strategy.  The example from the text that stood out was the single sentence “In accordance with the parameters set for Congress as they saw them the majority was able to rule the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 as unconstitutional and reserved that right for the states.”  It would have been perfectly acceptable to substitute that entire phrase for one that simply stated that Congress felt the Act was a decision for the states to make, but that would not have captured the essence of the official style and the inherent credibility we associate with it in quite the same way.  This quotation provides a not entirely uncommon example of my writing incorporating more than one official style strategy in one sentence.  In the case the other strategy, alongside the complex sentence strategy, is the verbose/bureaucratic strategy where a sentence drones on and is accomplished using more words than are necessary or efficient to convey the information.  Just like the complex sentence strategy this could have been to elongate my writing and for the purposes of the assignment’s guidelines, but I also believe that it gave me an opportunity to include a level of diction and verbiage that allowed me to present the information in a format that would, to anyone familiar with the topic, appear more credible and trustworthy.

          While I have explored the unnecessary nature much of my writing has, I think that it also helps to answer the question of the significance of this style as well and it pertains to the motive behind why I wrote this text and the purpose of the verbiage involved.  While it can appear tedious it helped me accomplish the goal of the case review itself, which is not only to explain my position on the case US v. Lopez, but also to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the source material. 

By reflecting much of the language used in the actual Supreme Court position, which was written in perhaps the most tedious and complicated official style I have ever encountered, I was able to inexplicitly convey to my professor that I had a comprehensive grasp of not only the case, but also constitutional precedent as it applied to the case.  While the official style is a powerful tool in specific settings, the exclusivity of it to the niche communities that it is tailored for can make it seem almost like a foreign language to people that are not privy to the jargon or stylistic cues that are uniquely developed in the official styles of specific professional communities.

Philosopher Speak: A Stylistic Review of John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism

 By Draza Kolpack

When first reading Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill you might find yourself going back to read paragraphs multiple times in an attempt to grasp what the man is trying to argue or define, much like I did. It is hard to contextualize how this piece became so wildly popular in 1861 London, where only two thirds of men and half of women were literate at all, when we ourselves are trying to understand the content and implications of his lengthy sentences and use of evidently educated diction. I would argue that his jargonistic writing and flowery academic language was used simply because that style was expected in philosophical circles, but the issue of Utilitarianism being published in a popular London magazine calls to question if that was Mill’s true intended audience. With this in mind, it is my belief that this work was published for three reasons: to clear up misconceptions and provide counterclaims to other philosophers in the field, persuade the educated elite that had opportunities to incite change within the government and support new policies reflecting Mill’s views, and to garner support from the greater public following the principle of ‘I don’t understand this but I trust it’ by playing to his credibility through the use of the official style. However, this is not the only context in which this piece is viewed or understood; because modern philosophers and academics are taught Mill’s works alongside various other historical philosophers, we must also take into account this modern context.

To truly contextualize the contexts at play, however, I feel that it is best to have a greater understanding of the official style of writing this piece employs. The official style, often found in academic and bureaucratic writing, is characterized by the use of passive or impersonal voice, complex sentences, slow sentence openings, shapeless or ‘unspeakable’ form, excessive use of jargon, a bureaucratic tone, and higher levels of abstraction alongside a number of other nuances. Mill’s makes use of a number of these tools when writing Utilitarianism; I will exemplify these strategies and illustrate the implications of such stylistic choices by providing passages from the text. Furthermore, I will provide readability statistics that may grant a better frame of reference for the difficulty of the text.

Passage One:

“A PASSING remark is all that needs be given to the ignorant blunder of supposing that those who stand up for utility as the test of right and wrong, use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial sense in which utility is opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to the philosophical opponents of utilitarianism, for even the momentary appearance of confounding them with any one capable of so absurd a misconception; which is the more extraordinary, inasmuch as the contrary accusation, of referring everything to pleasure, and that too in its grossest form, is another of the common charges against utilitarianism: and, as has been pointedly remarked by an able writer, the same sort of persons, and often the very same persons, denounce the theory "as impracticably dry when the word utility precedes the word pleasure, and as too practicably voluptuous when the word pleasure precedes the word utility."”

This excerpt provides a great example of how the author tends to utilize slow sentence openings, essentially employing a long windup into an even longer and more complex sentence. These drawn-out sentence openings and the subsequent complex sentences utilized by Mill may just reflect the writing style expected of philosophy and academia in his time period, but these strategies serve to exclude the average reader; not only the diction but the addition of multiple concepts per sentence lends itself to unnecessarily complicated text that is not easily understood by those not in academic circles.

Passage Two:

“Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit. But the bare enunciation of such an absurdity as this last, renders refutation superfluous.”

There are countless examples of shapeless/unspeakable writing in this piece, of which the passage above is one. While this writing style was and continues to be common with philosophical works it still calls to question how the meaning on this work is understood by different audiences and what information is lost in translation.

Readability Statistics: (Pulled from a longer segment of passage two as listed above)

(Gunning Fog Index: estimated grade level required to understand text / Flesch Reading Ease: scale from 1-100, 1 being most difficult to read and 100 being the easiest)

Now that the groundwork has been set, we must discuss the significance of the strategies within the contexts, and the spheres of human activity, in which Utilitarianism is found. The first that I would like to focus on is the original context; Utilitarianism was a piece published in three issues by Fraser’s Magazine in 1861 aiming to explain what utilitarianism is, to show why it is the best theory of ethics, and to defend it against a wide range of criticisms and misunderstandings. The primary audience for this piece must have been other philosophers, Jeremy Bentham (another utilitarian philosopher) in particular, in order to provide criticisms to Bentham’s ideas and detail the “misconceptions” surrounding Utilitarianism. Mill’s use of the official style suits the purely academic nature of this piece well, but because this work was published in a public London magazine the audience, and consequently the implications of Mill’s style of choice, grew at an incredible scale. While it seems clear that this work was not meant for the eyes of the generally illiterate public, instead with the focus of countering Bentham’s ideas and persuading the educated elite that had the power or opportunity to incite change within the government regarding support for new policies reflecting Mill’s views, Utilitarianism became largely prolific with the masses as an articulation of liberal humanistic morality. The easiest implication of this to pinpoint, and a trend that I feel parallels but is not as prevalent in modern contexts of this piece, is that the use of the official style can effectively gatekeep information from a massive majority of the readership. While it is true that the arguments of Jeremy Bentham and other utilitarian philosophers may have been adequately countered and that the political elite may have been swayed by this presentation of ‘proper’ ethics, the public also played a massive role in this context; the recently formed republic in Britain at this time was meant to represent the will of its constituents (the public) through its policy. From a perspective outside of academia, a perspective shared by nearly all of the general public at this time, writing in this style would likely portray the author as intelligent and credible even though the content would be difficult for them to consume- support for these ethics based on the rule of ‘I don’t understand this but I trust it’ had a very real impact. As a double-edged sword of sorts, half rebuttal half persuasive argument, Utilitarianism accomplishes each goal through the establishment of perceived credibility to its numerous audiences.

Now we must discuss Utilitarianism’s modern context; in that scholars and philosophers have not stopped studying the work of John Stuart Mill even to this day. The sphere of human interaction in which this piece is consumed has changed to a degree, though the implications largely stay the same. The main difference lies in the fact that Mill’s work is not presented outside of an academic setting today, and beyond that, the persuasive element of this piece is not nearly as applicable in a modern setting (in that there are no century old British elites and citizens to sway). Once again, we face the fact that the official style gatekeeps information from those outside of academic circles, but I find that it has a very diluted impact; while the average reader would certainly have difficulty reading this piece, they also have very little opportunity to make the attempt. The gatekeeping element created by the use of the official style is of course still present but academic institutions are now becoming the focal point for this issue- this in of itself has implications. Because of the close ties between academic writing and the official style, Mill’s proposal for a whole branch of governing ethics goes largely unseen by the public; the constituency that had so much pull as support for this work grew in 1861 Britain is not reflected by members of the public in this modern model. One may argue that no one wants to read the work of an age-old philosopher regardless, but I find it important to recognize the official style and the strategies it utilizes to contextualize the true goal of an authors work and the implications that has on the applicable audiences.

Should We Criminalize the Official Style?

By Tommy Knoche

In an effort to look at how the official style is used today I looked at the article Cannabis and Athletic Performance which was published in the academic journal Sports Medicine. The article from September 2021 is focused on the effects that cannabis can have on athletic performance. Marijuana is one of the most commonly used recreational substances in the world and researchers have begun looking into other uses for the substances. This particular article was looking at the effect consuming marijuana has on athletic performance. As I understand, the intended audience was other researchers in the field of sports medicine, athletic trainers, and athletes themselves. The entire article was written in the official style. I believe that this was done to establish credibility for the authors and their writing as well as attempt to make sure potentially obscure information was completely communicated.

As mentioned previously the entire article was written in the official style. The intention of this is to establish credibility so that the research that they are talking about in their journal is taken seriously by others in their field. In fields like sports medicine authors need to ensure that whoever reads their article can trust that they know what they are talking about in their article as well as their actual research. If readers don’t trust that the people writing the articles know what they are talking about then the entire article becomes useless because nobody will take the information seriously. If all of this research isn’t looked at sincerely then people won't use it as a stepping stone to the discovery of more knowledge.This is the case with all kinds of writing, not just scientific pieces . You want your readers to be able to trust that you understand the topics that you are writing about, but as mentioned above, in scientific writing it is especially important. There is little room for interpretation in science and because of that writers need to ensure that they can communicate their knowledge on the subject while knowing that their audience will believe that they know what they are talking about.

Writing in the scientific realm also makes it more difficult for authors to avoid the official style. Because there is so much scientific/domain specific language, it makes the piece of writing more jargonistic than pieces in other fields. The vast majority of people might not know what “putative endogenous cannabinoid receptors'' are but others in the field would rather you say that than “the places in your body where cannabis binds to” because it shows that you have specific knowledge on the subject. Jargonistic pieces like this one tend to exclude a large portion of readers because only a select few have the background knowledge to understand what is being talked about. While the official style is usually used this way to intentionally exclude people, I do not believe that is the case with this piece of writing. The authors are almost forced into the exclusion of others just to prove that they know what they are talking about. I believe that this is one of the problems with the official style of writing. Writers are forced to exclude people from fully enjoying and learning from their work just to prove that they can be trusted. It should not matter what style you write in as long as the information you are presenting is correct, unfortunately that is not the case in the academic community. As of right now it seems that the academic community relies on something I’ll call “trickle down knowledge”. What I mean by that is that people in the scientific community write just to be understood and trusted by one another. They then count on others to transcribe what they discovered and spread it to the general public. Would it not be more efficient to write in a way that allows anybody to access the information? I understand that the jargon will always be there, as that is just the nature of scientific writing, but I think that it could benefit from trying to be less dry and more focused on just effectively communicating what has been discovered and what can be learned.

            That is why I believe a shift away from the official style is needed. So many people and ideas are ignored simply because they do not look and sound like they are “supposed to”. The main focus on different pieces of writing should be the content and what the author is trying to communicate to their audience. It doesn’t matter if it is a piece of legislation, scientific findings, or an on-campus announcement, the content of the piece should be the focus, not how it is written. Writing should be for everyone. In my article, Cannabis and Athletic Performance, for example they say “The ability of cannabis and THC to perturb cardiovascular homeostasis warrants further investigation regarding mechanisms by which performance may be affected across different exercise modalities and energetic demands”. This is a really long and complex way of saying that “weed affects the way that your body sends blood to places and could be a potential way to increase athletic performance”. The whole point of the article is to get that information out to people so that, if they live someplace where it is legal, they can see how it affects their training and performance. By using the official style the authors are isolating a large portion of their audience. Oftentimes people are capable of understanding complex and jargonistic pieces but choose not to simply because they are dense and do not get to the point. The official style is especially bad when used in informative pieces, because they should be straight to the point and communicate the information effectively. The official style interferes with this smooth transmission of information and should be avoided.

            I do understand that there may be some pushback to this for a number of reasons. The official style has been around for so long that moving away from it almost seems blasphemous at this point. But like everything else it is good to grow and evolve which is what I believe we should do with the way we write. The official style is nice in the sense that it gives any piece of writing the air of importance and just writing that way offers an increase in credibility to the author. However, these benefits would effectively disappear if everybody agreed to shift towards plain style as the choice for academic writing. The official style is so ingrained into society's idea of what a “proper” piece of writing should sound like that it will be tough to start the change, but once people start to realize the benefits of using more plain language I think that it will start to gain traction in all kinds of communities. Even certain types of writing, such as academic or scientific pieces, don’t completely switch. I think any decrease in official style would be a benefit.

            From the insight into the official style and a look at the article from Sports Medicine, I hope that you can see the ill effects that the official style can bring about. In trying to establish credibility, the authors were forced to make their writing less clear, jargonistic, and less accessible. I believe that a shift away from the official style is needed, especially with informative pieces like this one to help ensure that the exchanging of ideas around the world continues and is as effective as possible.

 

Voting Isn’t Just for Academics: Official Style in Political Studies

By Tori Horman

Often, I have been assigned academic articles to read for classes that I just couldn’t seem to understand. The content of the article may be important or useful, but the way it’s written leaves me wondering what point it was even trying to make. This often frustrating type of writing is known as official style. In this article, I will be breaking down certain strategies used when writing in official style and how they can be improved to make the writing clearer. If the writing is clearer and easier to understand, this means that more people will be able to access the information. If more people are able to access the information, they are more likely to be able to use that information to make more informed decisions in their lives. The text I chose to review was an article from the Journal of Social Media + Society titled “Do We Know Politicians’ True Selves From the Media? Exploring the Relationship Between Political Media Exposure and Perceived Political Authenticity,” by Simon M. Luebke and Iris Englemann. The journal it was published in, the Journal of Social Media + Society, focuses on “the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future.” Their mission is to gather studies on social media as technology evolves and is open to a variety of research methodologies. Both authors work in the Communication Science department at Friedrich Schiller University in Germany. Englemann is a professor while Luebke is a research assistant. Both authors have had their work published in several academic journals.

The genre of the piece is academic writing, which I would characterize by emphasis on research methods, establishing credibility, and the use of the official style. Another common characteristic of academic writing is the fact that it is peer reviewed by other experts, which goes along with the importance of establishing credibility. This type of writing tends to circulate within academic communities and is often published in peer reviewed journals. This text was written in order to explore the social media use of politicians and how that can have a significant effect on voters. Readers may be motivated to read it because they want to know how politicians are using social media and how they may unknowingly be swayed to have an impression on this person based solely on their social media presence and how they are discussed in the news and other mass media. They can use this information to make more conscious and informed decisions on why they support the politicians that they support. However, it is unlikely to be accessed outside of an academic setting, due to the inaccessibility of the writing. It may be assigned to students of a political science or communications class, or it may be read by other researchers and used as a source to expand on the topic.

The article uses a lot of political studies jargon, which makes sense considering the target audience, but for someone like me who is not involved in the study of political science, there were many unfamiliar terms. When explaining how they chose to conduct their study, the authors use lots of jargon referring to several theories, “As previous research provided descriptive insights on the question, we apply a more theory-driven approach, drawing on the literature on media priming theory, performed authenticity in social media, political personalization, and dual processing theory.” Fortunately, these theories, as well as other terms such as “political personalization” are explained later in the article, but when I first read this sentence, I was unsure of what exactly they would be looking at in their research.

Another component of official style that this article uses is passive voice. In the abstract it states, “Results from an online quota survey in Germany (N = 1,210) show that differences in perceived political authenticity are not simply determined by citizens’ political attitudes but can also be explained by their frequency of exposure to political information in different media types.” When I began reading this sentence, I was confused as to who these differences in perceived authenticity were referring to. Was it differences in how the media reported things? Who were the ones perceiving the authenticity of the politicians? Was it the media or the people? A way to reword this so that the subject is clearer could be something like, “Results from an online quota survey in Germany show that in addition to citizens’ political attitudes, how frequently they are exposed to political information in the media can influence how they perceive a politician’s authenticity.” The term “political authenticity” used here is an example of passive voice in itself because it turns an action (the action of perceiving something or someone as authentic) into a concept.

This article also contains sentences that use complex vocabulary and structure where it is not needed, another component of official style. An example of this would be the sentence, “This ordinariness dimension of authenticity comprises impressions that contradict the notion of calculated politicians who do not act based on true convictions but rather on strategic motives.” In this section of the article, it discusses different factors that play a part in how people judge a politician as authentic, ordinariness being one of them.  A way to make this sentence more clear would be something like, “Politicians that appear ordinary and down-to-Earth contradict people’s usual impression of politicians who don’t believe in what they’re saying, but say it to attract supporters.”

An example of a sentence that uses several official style components at once reads, “Media priming is the outcome of attribute agenda setting, that is, processes in which the salience of different personality traits of politicians is transferred from the media to the public.” First of all, this is an example of a complex sentence because it combines several complete thoughts together with multiple commas. we have jargon with the words “media priming” and “attribute agenda processing.” This section of the article is attempting to explain the concept of media priming, which is one of the theories the authors are basing their research off. But in doing so, it brings in another jargonistic term that is defined in an overly complex and verbose way, “in which the salience of different personality traits of politicians is transferred from the media to the public.” I was unfamiliar with the word “salience,” so I looked it up and based on the context of this sentence “salient,” according to Merriam Webster, means “standing out conspicuously” or “of notable significance.” So, they are talking about the personality traits of the politicians that stick out the most. This sentence also contains passive voice. Both the subject and action are made unclear by using the verb “is.” The personality trait “is being transferred from the media to the public,” but wording it this way obscures who is the one doing the transferring and puts more distance between the actor and the action they are doing. One way this sentence could be fixed would be, “Media priming is the outcome of the media pushing a certain narrative. Attribute agenda setting occurs when the media emphasizes certain personality traits of a politician to the public.” This revision splits up the sentence into two, making it less complex. It also uses clearer vocabulary to define the concept of attribute agenda setting, as well as rearranging the sentence to make the subject (the media) and the action they are doing (emphasizing a personality trait) clearer. 

One may argue that language like this must be used when describing a study, because it establishes credibility. And while I understand how the use of language is appropriate for the intended audience, there is really no need to use complex and vague language, when simpler and more clear sentence structure can be used to convey the exact same meaning. I believe that official style certainly has its place, but too much of it can be a bad thing. The study in question looks at something that affects everyone, not just academics. People with a lower education level vote too, and it is important that everyone can become an informed voter. By reading the results of this study, people will be able to be more aware of how politicians are using social media to appear authentic in order to gain their support. This applies to other political studies that look into how voters are influenced. If people know how they are being influenced, they can make more critical and conscious decisions about who they support.