Identify whether the following paragraph uses a direct, indirect, or semi-indirect organizational pattern.

Due to budgetary restraints, departmental charge cards will no longer be valid for purchasing supplies. Departments will now order all supplies through central purchasing in Accounting. The new procedure for ordering supplies will be effective March 1. Improved company intranet functionality will make this process easy and effective. The electronic Supply Request Form can be found on the intranet in the "Orders" folder. Supply requests submitted via the intranet will be processed within 24 hours.

a. Semi-indirect
b. Indirect
c. Direct

In business writing, there are three main approaches to how to provide messages to an audience: direct strategy, indirect strategy, and semi-indirect strategy. The direct strategy places the purpose or conclusion of the message at first followed by the details of that idea. Using the indirect strategy, instead, implies starting the message with the details to finish with the central idea. The semi-indirect strategy is used when the main idea of the message is given in the middle of the speech and is surrounded by details at the beginning and the end.

In the excerpt, the main idea is:

"The new procedure for ordering supplies will be effective March 1";

which appears in the middle of the paragraph. Therefore, the speaker used the semi-indirect messaging strategy.