When we talk to someone face-to-face, we know just who we are talking to. We automatically adjust our speech to be sure we are communicating our message. Many writers don't make those same adjustments when they write to different audiences, usually because they don't take the time to think about who will be reading what they write. To be sure that we communicate clearly in writing, we need to adjust our message--how we say to and what information 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 the needs or expectations of your audience in order to convey information or argue for a particular claim. Your audience might be your instructor, classmates, the president of an organization, the staff of a management company, or any other number of possibilities. You need to know your audience before you start writing.

Audiences come in all shapes and sizes. They may be a group of similar people or combinations of different groups of people. You'll need to determine who they are in order to analyze your audience. This guide divides audience into two categories: academic and nonacademic.

Note: Your audience can be a combination of the two.

Writers determine their audience types by considering:

• Who they are (age, sex, education, economic status, 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

Michel Muraski, Journalism and Technical Communication Department
Three categories of audience are the "lay" audience, the "managerial" audience, and the "experts."

The "lay" 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 want attractive graphics or visuals.

The "managerial audience may or may have more knowledge than the lay audience about the subject, but they need knowledge so they can make a decision about the issue. Any background information, facts, statistics needed to make a decision should be highlighted.

The "experts" 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 and technical, style and vocabulary may be specialized or technical, source citations are reliable and up-to-date, and documentation is accurate.

Assuming you are writing a paper for a class, ask yourself who is the reader? The most important reader is probably the instructor, even if a grader will look at the paper first. Ask yourself what you know about your teacher and his or her approach to the discipline. Do you know, for example, if this teacher always expects papers to be carefully argued? Has this teacher emphasized the importance of summarizing cases accurately before referring to them? Will this professor be looking for an "argument synthesis," showing how the cases all support one point or will this prof be more interested in seeing how the cases complicate one another? In other words, take the time to brainstorm about what you've learned about the teacher to help you meet his or her expectations for this paper. You probably know more about the teacher than you think, and asking questions about how the teacher treats this material in class will help you remember those details to help you shape your paper.

Academic Audience Example

Psychology 100 - Your paper should be about 6 pages.

The My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1969 was a particularly egregious case of overobedience to military authority in wartime. Show the connection between this event and Milgram's experiments. [Milgram used his authority as a researcher to convince subjects to administer what they thought were painful, even life-threatening, shocks to uncooperative people.] Note that Milgram himself treated the My Lai massacre in the epilogue to his Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974). (Behrens and Rosen, 384-5).

Nonacademic audiences read your writing for reasons other than to grade you. (Some teachers assign papers specifically asking students to write for nonacademic audiences). They will gain information from your writing. Think about writing a newsletter or a resume: audiences read these for information, only how they use the information varies. A nonacademic audience involves more than writing. Consider the following:

• You'll have to determine who the audience is.
• You'll have to think about what is an appropriate format to use.
• You'll have to consider what is and is not an appropriate topic for your audience. (If you don't have one already.)
• You'll have to determine how your topic will fit the format.
• History 342 - Discovering and Colonizing New Worlds
  
  Imagine that you are an administrator for the school district. In light of the Columbus controversy, you have been assigned to draft a set of guidelines for teaching about Columbus in the district's elementary and junior high schools. These guidelines will explain official policy to parents and teachers in teaching children about Columbus and the significance of his voyages. They will also draw on arguments made on both sides of the controversy, as well as on historical facts on which both sides agree.
  
  Draft these guidelines. Suggested format: a prefatory section giving the rationale for the guidelines and a set of purposes governing the new policies, followed by the guidelines themselves with an explanation of each one (specifically citing sources). A conclusion is optional. (Behrens and Rosen, 314)

Donna Lecourt, English Department
An audience addressed versus an audience invoked is basically your real audience versus the reader you create through your text and introduction. In a way, you tell the reader who you want them to be. In a conference paper I'm writing, I start off by assuming that we're (the reader and myself) sharing some presumptions. By saying that, I'm almost telling the reader who I want them to be. I'm creating an audience position, that "Yes, there exists some reality." But I'm also trying to create it for people who are going to approach this and say, "Okay there are things I think we all hold in common. I don't say that in my text, but my text invokes it. The other audience, the real audience, are those who will be at the conference. Who's at the conference and who reads the journal are not always the same.

Kate Kiefer, English Department
For most academic papers, the teacher is the explicit audience. But even within the same discipline, professors might expect quite different formats for papers. For example, in sociology, one prof might ask you to write mainly about your own experiences and your reactions to your experience. Another professor might want you to do library or field research about a social problem and never refer to your own experiences or attitudes toward that problem.

Teachers will often try to give students more experience with writing to different audiences by targeting particular readers for a given paper. Then students address the target audience (class members, members of a business community, congressional representatives, and so on), including the teacher as a secondary audience.

Steve Reid, English Department
When asked who their audience is, many students say, "It's my teacher."

I think it's useful for students to widen their sense of audience in order to realize that their specific teacher is, in fact, a representative reader from a particular academic field or discourse community. Their teacher may be a composition teacher, an English literature teacher, a historian, a chemist, a psychologist, or a biologist--and they want and expect writing that is appropriate for their field.

In terms of their expectations about effective writing, each of these teachers "wants' something slightly different, and those differences reflect the expectations of different academic areas. A composition teacher may want an introduction that gradually leads into the topic; a journalist may want an article that begins immediately with the most startling fact or event; a chemist may want to begin with a review of the research. Psychologists, literature professors, and historians may or may not want you to use your own personal experience, depending on the level (informal to formal) of the writing. Not all academic writing has the same requirements, and those requirements are not so much personal whims (Professor Jones hates it when I use first-person or "I"!) as they are the expectations of that particular academic discourse.

So when you are writing an essay, imagine writing not just for your teacher, but for your teacher as a representative of a larger group of readers who belong to that particular academic area. That awareness may help you see that the requirements of that assignment are not just strange or quirky, but make some sense in the larger context of that particular academic discourse.

When we talk to someone face-to-face, we always know just who we're talking to. We automatically adjust our speech to be sure we communicate our message. For instance, when we talk to three-year olds, we shorten sentences and use simpler words. When we talk to college professors, we use longer sentences and more formal language.

In short, we change what we say because we know our audience.

Interestingly, many writers don’t make the same adjustments when they write to different audiences, usually because they don’t take the time to think about who will be reading what they write. But to be sure that we communicate clearly in writing, we need to adjust our message--how we say it and what information we include--by recognizing that different readers can best understand different messages.

As a concept, it sounds so simple: Think about who will read your paper before and while you write, and adjust your paper to help your reader understand it.

Compared to the theory of relativity, this concept is a piece of cake.

So why would teachers of writing spend so much time and energy talking about this simple idea? It turns out that writing (or revising) for a particular audience is much harder than thinking about it in the abstract

Let’s say you’ve just had a terrible experience with Parking Management and decide to write a letter to The Collegian to complain about this campus service. As you think about writing your letter to The Collegian, you’ll need to think not only about audience but also about why you are writing to those readers. Do you want simply to tell your story? Do you want to argue directly for a change in policy? Do you want to raise fellow students’ consciousness about a problem so that the student senate will eventually take up the issue? Depending on your goal, you might write a narrative, an argument, or a causal analysis. Which approach is most likely to be effective with your readers?

Writers need to consider both audience and purpose in writing because the two elements affect the paper so significantly, and decisions about one will affect the other.

Most writers complete their task and audience analysis before they begin writing, but it’s important to review what you know about both the specific task and readers’ expectations while you draft and revise the paper. Reviewing audience concerns as a separate step in your revising process is an especially good way to be sure you’re shaping your paper to best fit your readers’ needs.

Don Zimmerman, Journalism and Technical Communication Department
The assumption often made in scientific and technical circles is if you're a biology prof and there's another biology prof who's working on a particular area, he may well be using a lot of unique terms the other one may not understand. A real problem in organizations is that the person who develops the product, the communication end of things, assumes a lot more than another person really understands.The question becomes, really, what level of understanding does a target audience have? The content area is a slippery thing for students to sometimes get a handle on. They just assume everybody in their discipline knows the terms.

The question is if you've got a manager up here, is he familiar enough with your technical terms? I see technical terms as different than jargon terms. The technical things, really, are often the points communicating the idea fairly succinctly and to the point with the population that's used to dealing with those. As you move up in the management organization, they may or may not know what's going on.

When we talk about things from the communications standpoint, we use a term called "frame of reference." I've learned there are many different terms like that in other fields. A body of literature called "reference base" is essentially the same thing. It's what the person reading or seeing the message brings to their setting. It's their total life experience framing how they interpret the message.

Analyzing your audience is essential. You need to investigate exactly who will read what you are going to write. For example, you might investigate who reads the journal articles or trade magazines in your field of study. Check out some of those magazines or journals and browse through several issues. In addition, you might interview people who will be your readers.

Remember: Analyze your audience BEFORE you start writing, so you'll know what format, style, vocabulary, or level or information is expected.

Writers in the advertising business spend a great deal of time researching their targeted audiences. Once they know who their audience is, they can mold their advertising--their words, format, graphics, images--to appeal to that specific audience.

You can determine the characteristics about your target audience through a demographic profile, or by investigating information or assumptions about your particular audience.

Don Zimmerman, Journalism and Technical Communication Department
One way to analyze an audience is what I call "informal" in its analysis techniques. The other way is a more "formal," structured approach that is not used a lot.

With the informal way, a whole series of things usually happens. As a professional works in the field, they grow an intuitive sense about what their target audiences are. In other words, it's like an engineer. They go to a conference, they read the journals, they start to know how to write for people or how to communicate about them or how to target that, without really doing it. In other words, it's life experiences with particular people that will give them that.

Other ways are by essentially reading and going through the publications they read. In other words, trade magazines. Some civil engineering news magazines are targeted for the practitioner in civil engineering. Those will give you a pretty good insight as to what's going on. A series of specialized civil engineering magazines deal with different aspects like earth moving news. There's a whole series of publications from the Institute of Concrete Development. Each of those are slightly different in what they want. Some of them are strong research journals and others are targeted to the day-to-day person who's operating in the field.

Writers can talk to other people in a company and say, "I'm doing this report for John Smith or Sally." How do they see the world on this? Especially a new person. Most organizations do pretty heavy copy edit in lots of cases. Part of it is, there's a corporate culture often about how you do things and how you say things that may or may not be articulated very well to a new person.

The more "formal" analysis techniques I like are things like writing focus groups and group techniques and surveys. One of the questions becomes, "What kinds of information do you need about the audience?" For me, in some ways, it's pretty simple. That is, "What is the primary purpose of this information?" "Is this information to inform them?" "Will that target audience be making a decision on that information?"

Even within the same discipline, professors might expect quite different formats for papers. For example, in sociology, one prof might ask you to write mainly about your own experiences and your reactions to your experience. Another professor might want you to do library or field research about a social problem and never refer to your own experiences or attitudes toward that problem.

In other words, college writing assignments--even if your teacher is your only reader-- require careful audience analysis.

Let’s assume for the moment that you are writing a paper for a class. Who is the reader? The most important reader is the professor, even if the prof has a grader who will look at the paper first. Sometimes the assignment will ask you to write to some reader other than the prof, and we’ll take up those audiences after we look in more detail at how you can analyze teachers as the primary audience for papers.

So what kinds of questions can you ask to help you understand your professor as your main reader?

Once you know your audience, you are ready to begin writing. Knowing your audience enables you to select or reject details for that specific audience. In addition, different audiences expect different types or formats for texts. Readers of Environmental Impact Statements don't want to read rhyming poetry extolling the virtues of nature. Mothers getting letters from children don't want to read a laboratory report about the events of the past month.

Knowing the knowledge level of your audience will help you determine how to write, how much information to include, how long to make your text, how subjective or objective you should be, and how formal or informal your text should be.

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Writers need to consider both audience and purpose in writing because the two elements affect writing significantly, and decisions about one affect the other. For instance, a main purpose in advertising is to sell a product. Advertisers seek the audience who is most likely to purchase a product. Once they have identified this group [called the "target audience"], they can write their ads to capture the attention of this audience. Hence, their purpose, which is to sell a product or service, shapes what they write. Consider WHY you are writing.

If you need more help with understanding your purpose in writing:

The first question for any writer should be, "Why am I writing?" "What is my goal or my purpose for writing?" For many writing contexts, your immediate purpose may be to complete an assignment or get a good grade. But the long-range purpose of writing is to communicate to a particular audience. In order to communicate successfully to your audience, understanding your purpose for writing will make you a better writer.

Purpose is the reason why you are writing. You may write a grocery list in order to remember what you need to buy. You may write a laboratory report in order to carefully describe a chemistry experiment. You may write an argumentative essay in order to persuade someone to change the parking rules on campus. You may write a letter to a friend to express your excitement about her new job.

Notice that selecting the form for your writing (list, report, essay, letter) is one of your choices that helps you achieve your purpose. You also have choices about style, organization, kinds of evidence that help you achieve your purpose

Focusing on your purpose as you begin writing helps you know what form to choose, how to focus and organize your writing, what kinds of evidence to cite, how formal or informal your style should be, and how much you should write.

Don Zimmerman, Journalism and Technical Communication Department
I look at most scientific and technical writing as being either informational or instructional in purpose. A third category is documentation for legal purposes. Most writing can be organized in one of these three ways. For example, an informational purpose is frequently used to make decisions. Memos, in most circles, carry key information.

When we communicate with other people, we are usually guided by some purpose, goal, or aim. We may want to express our feelings. We may want simply to explore an idea or perhaps entertain or amuse our listeners or readers. We may wish to inform people or explain an idea. We may wish to argue for or against an idea in order to persuade others to believe or act in a certain way. We make special kinds of arguments when we are evaluating or problem solving. Finally, we may wish to mediate or negotiate a solution in a tense or difficult situation.

Remember, however, that often writers combine purposes in a single piece of writing. Thus, we may, in a business report, begin by informing readers of the economic facts before we try to persuade them to take a certain course of action.

In expressive writing, the writer's purpose or goal is to put thoughts and feelings on the page. Expressive writing is personal writing. We are often just writing for ourselves or for close friends. Usually, expressive writing is informal, not intended for outside readers. Journal writing, for example, is usually expressive writing.

However, we may write expressively for other readers when we write poetry (although not all poetry is expressive writing). We may write expressively in a letter, or we may include some expressive sentences in a formal essay intended for other readers.

In exploratory writing, the writer's purpose is to ask key questions and reflect on topics that defy simple answers. In those topics where intuition and reflection are more important than rational analysis or argumentation, writers focus more on their journey of discovery than on any definite answers. In exploratory writing, your readers are companions, sharing your journey of discovery, listening to your thoughts and reflections.

As a purpose or goal of writing, entertaining is often used with some other purpose--to explain, argue, or inform in a humorous way. Sometimes, however, entertaining others with humor is our main goal. Entertaining may take the form of a brief joke, a newspaper column, a television script or an Internet home page tidbit, but its goal is to relax our reader and share some story of human foibles or surprising actions.

Writing to inform is one of the most common purposes for writing. Most journalistic writing fits this purpose. A journalist uncovers the facts about some incident and then reports those facts, as objectively as possible, to his or her readers. Of course, some bias or point-of-view is always present, but the purpose of informational or reportorial writing is to convey information as accurately and objectively as possible. Other examples of writing to inform include laboratory reports, economic reports, and business reports.

Writing to explain, or expository writing, is the most common of the writing purposes. The writer's purpose is to gather facts and information, combine them with his or her own knowledge and experience, and clarify for some audience who or what something is, how it happened or should happen, and/or why something happened.

Explaining the whos, whats, hows, whys, and wherefores requires that the writer analyze the subject (divide it into its important parts) and show the relationship of those parts. Thus, writing to explain relies heavily on definition, process analysis, cause/effect analysis, and synthesis.

Explaining versus Informing
So how does explaining differ from informing? Explaining goes one step beyond informing or reporting. A reporter merely reports what his or her sources say or the data indicate. An expository writer adds his or her particular understanding, interpretation, or thesis to that information. An expository writer says this is the best or most accurate definition of literacy, or the right way to make lasagne, or the most relevant causes of an accident.

An arguing essay attempts to convince its audience to believe or act in a certain way. Written arguments have several key features:

• A debatable claim or thesis
• A focus on one or more of the four types of claims
• A fair representation of opposing arguments
• An argument based on evidence presented in a reasonable tone
. The issue must have some reasonable arguments on both (or several) sides. : Claim of fact, claim of cause and effect, claim of value, and/or claim of policy (problem solving). combined with arguments against the opposition and for the overall claim. . Although appeals to character and to emotion may be used, the primary appeal should be to the reader's logic and reason.

Although the terms argument and persuasion are often used interchangeably, the terms do have slightly different meanings. Argument is a special kind of persuasion that follows certain ground rules. Those rules are that opposing positions will be presented accurately and fairly, and that appeals to logic and reason will be the primary means of persuasion. Persuasive writing may, if it wishes, ignore those rules and try any strategy that might work. Advertisements are a good example of persuasive writing. They usually don't fairly represent the competing product, and they appeal to image, to emotion, to character, or to anything except logic and the facts--unless those facts are in the product's favor.

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Writing to evaluate a person, product, thing, or policy is a frequent purpose for writing. An evaluation is really a specific kind of argument: it argues for the merits of the subject and presents evidence to support the claim. A claim of value--the thesis in an evaluation--must be supported by criteria (the appropriate standards of judgment) and supporting evidence (the facts, statistics, examples, or testimonials).

Writers often use a three-column log to set up criteria for their subject, collect relevant evidence, and reach judgments that support an overall claim of value. Writing a three-column log is an excellent way to organize an evaluative essay. First, think about your possible criteria. Remember: criteria are the standards of judgment (the ideal case) against which you will measure your particular subject. Choose criteria which your readers will find valid, fair, and appropriate. Then, collect evidence for each of your selected criteria. Consider the following example of a restaurant evaluation: