Word Processing Software
How to produce information that communicates effectively and accurately,taking into account time, content, meaning and organisation of theinformation and the needs of the audience.
Writing in Your Audience’s Language
The content of your communication is not what you intend to say but what your audience understands. Put anotherway, if you mean to say one thing and your audience picks up another, you have failed terribly in your writing.As such, it is important to fine-tune your writing such that you are able to deliver your message without confusingyour recipients. One of the best ways to achieve that is by understanding their language and filtering what youwrite through that.When we talk to someone face-to-face, we know just who we are talking to. We automatically adjust our speech tobe sure we are communicating our message. Many writers don't make those same adjustments when they write todifferent audiences, usually because they don't take the time to think about who will be reading what they write. Tobe sure that we communicate clearly in writing, we need to adjust our message - how we say to and whatinformation we include - by recognizing that different readers can best understand different messages.
An audience is a group of readers who reads a particular piece of writing. As a writer, you should anticipate theneeds or expectations of your audience in order to convey information or argue for a particular claim. Youraudience might be your instructor, classmates, the chairperson of an organization, the staff of a managementcompany, or any other number of possibilities. You need to know your audience before you start writing.
Determining your Audience Type
Audiences come in all shapes and sizes. They may be a group of similar people or combinations of different groupsof people. You'll need to determine who they are in order to analyze your audience.Writers determine their audience types by considering:
Who they are (age, sex, education, economic status, and political/social/religious beliefs);
What Level of Information they have about the subject (novice, general reader, specialist or expert);
The Context in which they will be reading a piece of writing (in a newspaper, textbook, popular magazine,specialized journal, on the Internet, and so forth).You'll need to analyze your audience in order to write effectively.
Three Categories of Audience
Three categories of audience are the "lay" audience, the "managerial" audience, and the "experts."The "
" audience has no special or expert knowledge. They connect with the human interest aspect of articles.They usually need background information; they expect more definition and description; and they may wantattractive graphics or visuals.The
audience may or may have more knowledge than the lay audience about the subject, but theyneed knowledge so they can make a decision about the issue. Any background information, facts, statistics neededto make a decision should be highlighted.The
may be the most demanding audience in terms of knowledge, presentation, and graphics or visuals.Experts are often "theorists" or "practitioners." For the "expert" audience, document formats are often elaborate andtechnical, style and vocabulary may be specialized or technical, source citations are reliable and up-to-date, anddocumentation is accurate.