Please read the footnote

Text: an original contemporary opinion-column-style practice extract.

The headline told me that everyone preferred the new layout. Everyone is a wonderfully economical word: it removes the need to ask who has been consulted. Beside it stood a tiny asterisk, looking too small to carry much trouble. At the bottom of the page, the trouble had been printed in a smaller typeface.

Eight volunteers had compared two versions of one screen. They had chosen a favourite after looking at each for thirty seconds. That does not make their answer worthless. It makes everyone the wrong-sized word for it. The footnote supplied people, time and conditions; the headline supplied a conclusion large enough to step over all three.

I read the page again with the footnote beside the claim instead of beneath it. The result became more modest and more interesting. I wanted to know how regular users would respond after a week, and whether a person completing a long form would make the same choice. Small print can be used to hide responsibility. Here it gave me the questions that the larger print had encouraged me to forget.

Analyse how the writer uses language and structure to interest and engage the reader.

In your answer, consider:

• language features and techniques
• structural techniques
• the effect on the reader.

Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.