Some pieces need to be written in plain style in order to cater to their audience and provide them with important information. The average adult reads at a seventh grade reading level, so plain language is becoming more and more important. Especially in cases like this, where this blog post is conveying important information.
This blog post is from a horse camp in Mazomanie, Hoofbeat Ridge. Hoofbeat Ridge runs a blog that updates campers and their parents on what is happening in the camp. Most of the blog posts are updates on how camps are going and they are all written in plain style. This particular post is a little different though, because it is updating people on important information that they would need to know if they were planning on attending camp around this time. This post is updating people on how the major flooding in Mazomanie is affecting camp and upcoming events:
http://hoofbeatridgedaycamp.blogspot.com/2018/08/end-of-august-camp-update.html
This post uses a lot of plain style strategies in order to make it easy to read. The organization in particular makes this post easy to read. Every paragraph is about a new topic and they each keep them short and to the point. Every time the topic changes, the paragraph changes to make it easy to read and navigate. It includes links and pictures that make it a little bit easier to understand and read.
The sentences are short and to the point. There aren’t any difficult words or jargon, so it is easy enough for anybody to understand. Anything that may need further explanation, such as the Able Trek Tours, has a quick explanation in parenthesis. It is also clear “who is kicking who” in all of these sentences. This post only gives the necessary information and provides it in a concise, straightforward way.
The Flesch Reading Ease is at 70.62, which means it is pretty easy to read and comprehend. The grade levels vary from 7th-9th, depending on the test, which is almost ideal for the average adult. The average sentence only has 16 words, so they are shorter than sentences written in official style. These readability results show that this is more plain style than official style and it is easier to read.
The audience for this blog mainly consists of the parents of campers. Other possible readers include campers, camp counselors and people who are thinking about sending their kids to camp here. The education level and background of the audience varies, so using plain style is the best strategy in this case. This post is also giving important information on the state of the camp and upcoming events and how it was all affected by the major flooding.
The best way to convey important information to the public is by using plain style. It leaves less room for misinterpretation. This post gets right to the point and tells the audience what they need to know and what is going on. If they had used official style, it would be harder to find the point. A lot of important information from press releases are written in official style and it is hard to know what is going on in some of these, especially with the average reading level for an adult is 7th grade.
This is only one example of plain style, and it might not be representative of all versions of plain style. It is also a fairly short blog post, so it doesn’t have as many opportunities to use plain style. More information might also help with this analysis, but we aren’t sure who wrote it or how much thought went into the style of this post. There is no way to tell whether or not this was a conscious decision, but all of the blog posts are written in plain style.
Plain style is the best way to get information across to the general public and it is the way Hoofbeat Ridge Camps have chosen to convey this information. They use a lot of plain style strategies to make this post readable. It contains a lot of important information, or at least information that would be important to their audience and they present it in a very plain way. There aren’t any difficult words or complex sentences and the entire post is organized in an efficient way.
Kira Nerat
No comments:
Post a Comment