R-parity violating terms in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model are studied within a parametrization characterized by a single vacuum expectation value for the scalar components of the Y=−1/2 superfields. The benefits of this efficient parametrization are that it enables phenomenological analyses of R-parity violation without a priori assumptions (such as setting most R-parity violating terms to zero in an ad hoc way). The tree-level fermionic mass eigenstates are derived and shown to be particularly simple in this scheme, involving only the bilinear μi R-parity violating terms. Suprisingly large values of these μi are consistent with the experimental constraints. This is outlined.