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Online Guide to Writing and Research

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• Online Guide to Writing

Targeting Your Audience

Isn’t your audience your professor? Many students assume that the instructor is the primary audience for their writing. While this is true, your assignment could call for you to write for different audiences—even hypothetical ones, such as professionals in your field of study or classmates. Sometimes it will be clear who your audience is going to be in your assignment instructions, and other times, investigating further will be necessary.  Click on the tabs below for more information.

• IMPLEMENTATION

Why is it important to know your audience?

Audience analysis  is crucial to understanding what should go into each piece of writing. Knowing your audience guides you on how to structure your essay, what kind of language and tone to use, what sort of information to use, and how to progress into each topic. 

While the tone you use in academic writing will be different than when giving a speech, we tend to adjust our message according to who is listening during both. You would not cover learning theories developed by psychologists with a group of kindergarteners, just as you would not write about the health benefits of grass-fed beef to an audience of vegetarians.

Inquiring About Your Audience

To develop an  audience profile , you need specific information about your audience—information about its understanding of and attitude toward your subject. When in doubt, always ask your professor, but below are some questions you can ask to probe further:

Who is my primary audience? 

What purpose will this writing serve for my readers? How will they use it?

Is my audience multicultural? 

What is my audience’s attitude toward and probable reaction to this writing?

Will readers expect certain patterns of thought in my writing? Will they need statistical data to be convinced? 

Implementation of Gathered Information

Once you have determined the answer to the questions on the previous tab, it is easier to plan content decisions:

how much information to convey

what kinds and levels of details to include 

what concepts to emphasize

how much time to spend on research 

what writing strategies to use

how to organize your information 

what words, tone, and style to use to communicate with your audience

Key Takeaways

• Determining how to frame your writing according to the readers is a courtesy to them and you as a writer.
• Knowing your audience guides you on how to structure your essay, what kind of language and tone to use, what sort of information to use, and how to progress into each topic. 

Mailing Address: 3501 University Blvd. East, Adelphi, MD 20783 This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . © 2022 UMGC. All links to external sites were verified at the time of publication. UMGC is not responsible for the validity or integrity of information located at external sites.

Table of Contents: Online Guide to Writing

Chapter 1: College Writing

How Does College Writing Differ from Workplace Writing?

What Is College Writing?

Why So Much Emphasis on Writing?

Chapter 2: The Writing Process

Doing Exploratory Research

Getting from Notes to Your Draft

Introduction

Prewriting - Techniques to Get Started - Mining Your Intuition

Prewriting: Targeting Your Audience

Prewriting: Techniques to Get Started

Prewriting: Understanding Your Assignment

Rewriting: Being Your Own Critic

Rewriting: Creating a Revision Strategy

Rewriting: Getting Feedback

Rewriting: The Final Draft

Techniques to Get Started - Outlining

Techniques to Get Started - Using Systematic Techniques

Thesis Statement and Controlling Idea

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Freewriting

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Summarizing Your Ideas

Writing: Outlining What You Will Write

Chapter 3: Thinking Strategies

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone: Style Through Vocabulary and Diction

Critical Strategies and Writing

Critical Strategies and Writing: Analysis

Critical Strategies and Writing: Evaluation

Critical Strategies and Writing: Persuasion

Critical Strategies and Writing: Synthesis

Developing a Paper Using Strategies

Kinds of Assignments You Will Write

Patterns for Presenting Information

Patterns for Presenting Information: Critiques

Patterns for Presenting Information: Discussing Raw Data

Patterns for Presenting Information: General-to-Specific Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Problem-Cause-Solution Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Specific-to-General Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Summaries and Abstracts

Supporting with Research and Examples

Writing Essay Examinations

Writing Essay Examinations: Make Your Answer Relevant and Complete

Writing Essay Examinations: Organize Thinking Before Writing

Writing Essay Examinations: Read and Understand the Question

Chapter 4: The Research Process

Planning and Writing a Research Paper

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Ask a Research Question

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Cite Sources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Collect Evidence

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Decide Your Point of View, or Role, for Your Research

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Draw Conclusions

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Find a Topic and Get an Overview

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Manage Your Resources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Outline

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Survey the Literature

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Work Your Sources into Your Research Writing

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Human Resources

Research Resources: What Are Research Resources?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Electronic Resources

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Print Resources

Structuring the Research Paper: Formal Research Structure

Structuring the Research Paper: Informal Research Structure

The Nature of Research

The Research Assignment: How Should Research Sources Be Evaluated?

The Research Assignment: When Is Research Needed?

The Research Assignment: Why Perform Research?

Chapter 5: Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity

Giving Credit to Sources

Giving Credit to Sources: Copyright Laws

Giving Credit to Sources: Documentation

Giving Credit to Sources: Style Guides

Integrating Sources

Practicing Academic Integrity

Practicing Academic Integrity: Keeping Accurate Records

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Paraphrasing Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Quoting Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Summarizing Your Sources

Types of Documentation

Types of Documentation: Bibliographies and Source Lists

Types of Documentation: Citing World Wide Web Sources

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - APA Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - CSE/CBE Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - Chicago Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - MLA Style

Types of Documentation: Note Citations

Chapter 6: Using Library Resources

Finding Library Resources

Chapter 7: Assessing Your Writing

How Is Writing Graded?

How Is Writing Graded?: A General Assessment Tool

The Draft Stage

The Draft Stage: The First Draft

The Draft Stage: The Revision Process and the Final Draft

The Draft Stage: Using Feedback

The Research Stage

Using Assessment to Improve Your Writing

Chapter 8: Other Frequently Assigned Papers

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Article and Book Reviews

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Reaction Papers

Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Adapting the Argument Structure

Writing Arguments: Purposes of Argument

Writing Arguments: References to Consult for Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Anticipate Active Opposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Determine Your Organization

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Develop Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Introduce Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - State Your Thesis or Proposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Write Your Conclusion

Writing Arguments: Types of Argument

Appendix A: Books to Help Improve Your Writing

Dictionaries

General Style Manuals

Researching on the Internet

Special Style Manuals

Writing Handbooks

Appendix B: Collaborative Writing and Peer Reviewing

Collaborative Writing: Assignments to Accompany the Group Project

Collaborative Writing: Informal Progress Report

Collaborative Writing: Issues to Resolve

Collaborative Writing: Methodology

Collaborative Writing: Peer Evaluation

Collaborative Writing: Tasks of Collaborative Writing Group Members

Collaborative Writing: Writing Plan

General Introduction

Peer Reviewing

Appendix C: Developing an Improvement Plan

Working with Your Instructor’s Comments and Grades

Appendix D: Writing Plan and Project Schedule

Devising a Writing Project Plan and Schedule

Reviewing Your Plan with Others

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What this handout is about

This handout will help you understand and write for the appropriate audience when you write an academic essay.

Audience matters

When you’re in the process of writing a paper, it’s easy to forget that you are actually writing to someone. Whether you’ve thought about it consciously or not, you always write to an audience: sometimes your audience is a very generalized group of readers, sometimes you know the individuals who compose the audience, and sometimes you write for yourself. Keeping your audience in mind while you write can help you make good decisions about what material to include, how to organize your ideas, and how best to support your argument.

To illustrate the impact of audience, imagine you’re writing a letter to your grandmother to tell her about your first month of college. What details and stories might you include? What might you leave out? Now imagine that you’re writing on the same topic but your audience is your best friend. Unless you have an extremely cool grandma to whom you’re very close, it’s likely that your two letters would look quite different in terms of content, structure, and even tone.

Isn’t my instructor my audience?

Yes, your instructor or TA is probably the actual audience for your paper. Your instructors read and grade your essays, and you want to keep their needs and perspectives in mind when you write. However, when you write an essay with only your instructor in mind, you might not say as much as you should or say it as clearly as you should, because you assume that the person grading it knows more than you do and will fill in the gaps. This leaves it up to the instructor to decide what you are really saying, and they might decide differently than you expect. For example, they might decide that those gaps show that you don’t know and understand the material. Remember that time when you said to yourself, “I don’t have to explain communism; my instructor knows more about that than I do” and got back a paper that said something like “Shows no understanding of communism”? That’s an example of what can go awry when you think of your instructor as your only audience.

Thinking about your audience differently can improve your writing, especially in terms of how clearly you express your argument. The clearer your points are, the more likely you are to have a strong essay. Your instructor will say, “They really understands communism—they’re able to explain it simply and clearly!” By treating your instructor as an intelligent but uninformed audience, you end up addressing her more effectively.

How do I identify my audience and what they want from me?

Before you even begin the process of writing, take some time to consider who your audience is and what they want from you. Use the following questions to help you identify your audience and what you can do to address their wants and needs:

• Who is your audience?
• Might you have more than one audience? If so, how many audiences do you have? List them.
• Does your assignment itself give any clues about your audience?
• What does your audience need? What do they want? What do they value?
• What is most important to them?
• What are they least likely to care about?
• What kind of organization would best help your audience understand and appreciate your argument?
• What do you have to say (or what are you doing in your research) that might surprise your audience?
• What do you want your audience to think, learn, or assume about you? What impression do you want your writing or your research to convey?

How much should I explain?

This is the hard part. As we said earlier, you want to show your instructor that you know the material. But different assignments call for varying degrees of information. Different fields also have different expectations. For more about what each field tends to expect from an essay, see the Writing Center handouts on writing in specific fields of study. The best place to start figuring out how much you should say about each part of your paper is in a careful reading of the assignment. We give you some tips for reading assignments and figuring them out in our handout on how to read an assignment . The assignment may specify an audience for your paper; sometimes the instructor will ask you to imagine that you are writing to your congressperson, for a professional journal, to a group of specialists in a particular field, or for a group of your peers. If the assignment doesn’t specify an audience, you may find it most useful to imagine your classmates reading the paper, rather than your instructor.

Now, knowing your imaginary audience, what other clues can you get from the assignment? If the assignment asks you to summarize something that you have read, then your reader wants you to include more examples from the text than if the assignment asks you to interpret the passage. Most assignments in college focus on argument rather than the repetition of learned information, so your reader probably doesn’t want a lengthy, detailed, point-by-point summary of your reading (book reports in some classes and argument reconstructions in philosophy classes are big exceptions to this rule). If your assignment asks you to interpret or analyze the text (or an event or idea), then you want to make sure that your explanation of the material is focused and not so detailed that you end up spending more time on examples than on your analysis. If you are not sure about the difference between explaining something and analyzing it, see our handouts on reading the assignment and argument .

Once you have a draft, try your level of explanation out on a friend, a classmate, or a Writing Center coach. Get the person to read your rough draft, and then ask them to talk to you about what they did and didn’t understand. (Now is not the time to talk about proofreading stuff, so make sure they ignore those issues for the time being). You will likely get one of the following responses or a combination of them:

• If your listener/reader has tons of questions about what you are saying, then you probably need to explain more. Let’s say you are writing a paper on piranhas, and your reader says, “What’s a piranha? Why do I need to know about them? How would I identify one?” Those are vital questions that you clearly need to answer in your paper. You need more detail and elaboration.
• If your reader seems confused, you probably need to explain more clearly. So if they say, “Are there piranhas in the lakes around here?” you may not need to give more examples, but rather focus on making sure your examples and points are clear.
• If your reader looks bored and can repeat back to you more details than they need to know to get your point, you probably explained too much. Excessive detail can also be confusing, because it can bog the reader down and keep them from focusing on your main points. You want your reader to say, “So it seems like your paper is saying that piranhas are misunderstood creatures that are essential to South American ecosystems,” not, “Uh…piranhas are important?” or, “Well, I know you said piranhas don’t usually attack people, and they’re usually around 10 inches long, and some people keep them in aquariums as pets, and dolphins are one of their predators, and…a bunch of other stuff, I guess?”

Sometimes it’s not the amount of explanation that matters, but the word choice and tone you adopt. Your word choice and tone need to match your audience’s expectations. For example, imagine you are researching piranhas; you find an article in National Geographic and another one in an academic journal for scientists. How would you expect the two articles to sound? National Geographic is written for a popular audience; you might expect it to have sentences like “The piranha generally lives in shallow rivers and streams in South America.” The scientific journal, on the other hand, might use much more technical language, because it’s written for an audience of specialists. A sentence like “Serrasalmus piraya lives in fresh and brackish intercoastal and proto-arboreal sub-tropical regions between the 45th and 38th parallels” might not be out of place in the journal.

Generally, you want your reader to know enough material to understand the points you are making. It’s like the old forest/trees metaphor. If you give the reader nothing but trees, they won’t see the forest (your thesis, the reason for your paper). If you give them a big forest and no trees, they won’t know how you got to the forest (they might say, “Your point is fine, but you haven’t proven it to me”). You want the reader to say, “Nice forest, and those trees really help me to see it.” Our handout on paragraph development can help you find a good balance of examples and explanation.

Reading your own drafts

Writers tend to read over their own papers pretty quickly, with the knowledge of what they are trying to argue already in their minds. Reading in this way can cause you to skip over gaps in your written argument because the gap-filler is in your head. A problem occurs when your reader falls into these gaps. Your reader wants you to make the necessary connections from one thought or sentence to the next. When you don’t, the reader can become confused or frustrated. Think about when you read something and you struggle to find the most important points or what the writer is trying to say. Isn’t that annoying? Doesn’t it make you want to quit reading and surf the web or call a friend?

Putting yourself in the reader’s position

Instead of reading your draft as if you wrote it and know what you meant, try reading it as if you have no previous knowledge of the material. Have you explained enough? Are the connections clear? This can be hard to do at first. Consider using one of the following strategies:

• Take a break from your work—go work out, take a nap, take a day off. This is why the Writing Center and your instructors encourage you to start writing more than a day before the paper is due. If you write the paper the night before it’s due, you make it almost impossible to read the paper with a fresh eye.
• Try outlining after writing—after you have a draft, look at each paragraph separately. Write down the main point for each paragraph on a separate sheet of paper, in the order you have put them. Then look at your “outline”—does it reflect what you meant to say, in a logical order? Are some paragraphs hard to reduce to one point? Why? This technique will help you find places where you may have confused your reader by straying from your original plan for the paper.
• Read the paper aloud—we do this all the time at the Writing Center, and once you get used to it, you’ll see that it helps you slow down and really consider how your reader experiences your text. It will also help you catch a lot of sentence-level errors, such as misspellings and missing words, which can make it difficult for your reader to focus on your argument.

These techniques can help you read your paper in the same way your reader will and make revisions that help your reader understand your argument. Then, when your instructor finally reads your finished draft, they won’t have to fill in any gaps. The more work you do, the less work your audience will have to do—and the more likely it is that your instructor will follow and understand your argument.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Determining Your Audience

Your paper should be “reader friendly,” meaning that the reader should not struggle to understand your ideas. You can make your paper reader friendly by analyzing your audience.

One of the first questions you should ask yourself is, “Who are the readers?”

Often the answer to this question is “the audience is my teacher,” so you need to think about the kind of language your teacher uses and the way language is used in the readings that your teacher assigns. Your voice as a writer should be consistent with the type of language used in your class. However, you should also think about who your intended audience is beyond the teacher. To define your audience, it helps to think about these things:

• Probable age
• Probable sex
• Probable education
• Probable economic status
• Probable social position
• Probable values
• Probable assumptions

Decide what your readers know or think they know about your subject.

To help you answer this question, ask yourself, “What is the probable source of their knowledge? Is it a direct experience or an observation? Will my readers react positively or negatively toward my subject?”

Next, ask yourself “What will my readers expect from my writing?”

When you are planning your writing, decide what your audience should expect to learn or gain by reading your essay.

You also need to consider how you can interest your readers in your subject.

If your audience is hostile toward your subject, decide how you can convince them to give your writing a fair reading. If your audience is sympathetic, decide how you can fulfill and enhance their expectations. If your audience is neutral, decide how you can catch and hold onto their attention.

Finally, you should decide how you can help your readers read your writing.

The structure of your paper can make your paper easy or difficult to read. Decide what kind of organizational pattern will help your audience see your purpose. Also, decide what guideposts and transitional markers your audience will need in order to follow your organization. Finally, decide what and how many examples your audience will need in order to understand your general statements.

The information on this page was adapted from: Trimmer, Joseph F. Writing With a Purpose . 11th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1995. Updated: January 2005, by Elizabeth Guiden

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How to Identify the Target Audience for Your Writing

Hitting the target (audience).

Identifying the target audience for your writing is crucial. Once you know your target audience, you can get your work in front of them, and have a better chance for recognition, success, and sales. Identifying your target audience for your writing takes some time and research, but will benefit you immensely if you put in the effort.

Still not convinced? Take a look at my previous article, “ Why Do You Need a Target Audience? ”

Five Questions

To begin the process of identifying your target audience, you need to ask yourself some questions. The following questions assume that you are already reading and engaging with content similar to what you are creating. When you think about your target audience, ask yourself the following five questions.

1. How do you engage with the genre/topic/medium?

When you think about your target audience, you need to consider in what way they will most enjoy your content. Do they look for digital or physical copies of the work? Do they enjoy short-, mid-, or long-form works? Is the information presented in a colorful visual way, or is it more simple? If you engage that way, it’s likely your audience will too. When you create and revise your writing, keep your audience’s taste in mind.

2. How do you find new content?

People are constantly finding and engaging with new content. But how they find it shapes what they are exposed to. Do they belong to book clubs or subscription lists? Do they read magazines or installments in a series? Do they depend on certain publishers or sellers to stock that type of content in one place so they can find it? Once you know how people find the kind of work you are creating, you have a better idea of who is going to those places to find it.

3. Where are content creators and the audience who engages with their work?

Social media plays a large role in modern content creation. Which social medias attract which kinds of creators? Do people have their own websites? Do people have forums, group chats, mailing lists, or other ways that they seek out content creators directly? When you consider where people are sharing and finding work, it can help you understand people’s ages, income levels, and other interests, which will more clearly define your target audience.

4. To whom do people who publish similar content market? How can you tell?

If you can view online interactions between creators or distributors that make content similar to yours, make up a rough “typical profile” of the people who seem to be consuming that content. What is their age, profession, gender, related interests, and price point they are willing to pay? How do the creators or distributors offer their writing for sale? Seeing positive and negative trends in marketing and content available to your audience will make it easier for you to consider both what you offer and how you offer it to your target audience.

5. What do successful people in your market do?

Find a few successful authors in your niche and take the time to analyze their sales model. Do they offer just their writing? Do they offer additional services like signed books or in-person appearances? Do they network with other creators to cross-promote each other’s work? Identifying the actions that lead to success with a certain target audience will reveal more about that audience’s interest and engagement with the kind of writing you are doing.

When in Doubt, Ask

A very useful tool in our modern age is direct contact with your potential target audience. Ask people what they like! Use polls, forum posts, social media, and surveys to check in with people. You may have more success in getting replies if you offer incentives to complete them. People love to talk about themselves, and if you frame your work in the context of their interests, you’ll both learn valuable information and be able to make initial contact with your target audience.

If your target audience is an underutilized or unrecognized one, you can still have success. But you will have to work harder to market and to get your content to them.

Search Engine Results

If you’re not sure where to start, search engines are your friend. You can just search the type of writing you do, or you can be more specific and search specific terms related to your work.

What I love about [genre] is… What I hate about [genre] is… In [genre] I want to see more…

It’s valuable to frame your content in the context of your audience’s interests. Don’t just think about why you like writing your content. Think about why others might enjoy reading it.

It is also worth searching for common tropes and typical issues in your genre.

Getting a Professional Opinion

It can be extremely helpful to have an editor read your manuscript while it is still relatively early to address any structural or overarching issues that might alienate your audience or derail your work. For more on manuscript evaluation, take a look at the post “ What is Manuscript Evaluation and Why Do I Need It? ”

Three Things That Will NOT Help You Find Your Target Audience

1. Believing “If I build it, they will come.” Not true. That’s no guarantee, and in fact, in an age where a constant deluge of information washes over consumers at an alarming rate, unless there’s a way for people to have your content put in front of them, they won’t find it. How often do you get in a car and drive out to the middle of nowhere on the off chance that a shop you might like will have opened in the middle of a field? Not being cognizant of the need to identify and bring your content to your target audience is the same thing.

2. Thinking, “If I send this to [famous person], they’ll feature it and I won’t have to find my audience.” Nope. In fact, this creates an additional layer of unlikeliness to the process. Even on the very slim chance that the famous person takes the time to consume media from someone they have never heard of, and that person actually likes your work, that doesn’t guarantee that your work will suit THEIR audience. They have no reason to show it to anyone. Even if magically it does fit their tastes and match their audience, it’s unlikely they would advertise for you for free—you’d need to compensate them for your work to be shared.

3. Assuming “I can ignore the need for a target audience, it will work out on its own.” Not the case. Deferring the issue doesn’t erase it. The earlier you start thinking about this and engaging with your possible audience, the better, since once you connect with your audience and establish yourself as a possible content resource, the more open people will be to consuming and paying for your content.

Your Target Audience Is Waiting

With a little bit of time and a little bit of research, you can identify who will be interested in reading your work. This research gives you the best chance of getting your work in front of the eyes of those who would want to engage with it. Identifying your target audience will benefit you both immediately and in the future as you continue to create new content. Find your audience to help them find you—and find and love your work.

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6.1 Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Content

Learning objectives.

• Identify the four common academic purposes.
• Identify audience, tone, and content.
• Apply purpose, audience, tone, and content to a specific assignment.

Imagine reading one long block of text, with each idea blurring into the next. Even if you are reading a thrilling novel or an interesting news article, you will likely lose interest in what the author has to say very quickly. During the writing process, it is helpful to position yourself as a reader. Ask yourself whether you can focus easily on each point you make. One technique that effective writers use is to begin a fresh paragraph for each new idea they introduce.

Paragraphs separate ideas into logical, manageable chunks. One paragraph focuses on only one main idea and presents coherent sentences to support that one point. Because all the sentences in one paragraph support the same point, a paragraph may stand on its own. To create longer assignments and to discuss more than one point, writers group together paragraphs.

Three elements shape the content of each paragraph:

• Purpose . The reason the writer composes the paragraph.
• Tone . The attitude the writer conveys about the paragraph’s subject.
• Audience . The individual or group whom the writer intends to address.

Figure 6.1 Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Content Triangle

The assignment’s purpose, audience, and tone dictate what the paragraph covers and how it will support one main point. This section covers how purpose, audience, and tone affect reading and writing paragraphs.

Identifying Common Academic Purposes

The purpose for a piece of writing identifies the reason you write a particular document. Basically, the purpose of a piece of writing answers the question “Why?” For example, why write a play? To entertain a packed theater. Why write instructions to the babysitter? To inform him or her of your schedule and rules. Why write a letter to your congressman? To persuade him to address your community’s needs.

In academic settings, the reasons for writing fulfill four main purposes: to summarize, to analyze, to synthesize, and to evaluate. You will encounter these four purposes not only as you read for your classes but also as you read for work or pleasure. Because reading and writing work together, your writing skills will improve as you read. To learn more about reading in the writing process, see Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” .

Eventually, your instructors will ask you to complete assignments specifically designed to meet one of the four purposes. As you will see, the purpose for writing will guide you through each part of the paper, helping you make decisions about content and style. For now, identifying these purposes by reading paragraphs will prepare you to write individual paragraphs and to build longer assignments.

Summary Paragraphs

A summary shrinks a large amount of information into only the essentials. You probably summarize events, books, and movies daily. Think about the last blockbuster movie you saw or the last novel you read. Chances are, at some point in a casual conversation with a friend, coworker, or classmate, you compressed all the action in a two-hour film or in a two-hundred-page book into a brief description of the major plot movements. While in conversation, you probably described the major highlights, or the main points in just a few sentences, using your own vocabulary and manner of speaking.

Similarly, a summary paragraph condenses a long piece of writing into a smaller paragraph by extracting only the vital information. A summary uses only the writer’s own words. Like the summary’s purpose in daily conversation, the purpose of an academic summary paragraph is to maintain all the essential information from a longer document. Although shorter than the original piece of writing, a summary should still communicate all the key points and key support. In other words, summary paragraphs should be succinct and to the point.

A summary of the report should present all the main points and supporting details in brief. Read the following summary of the report written by a student:

Notice how the summary retains the key points made by the writers of the original report but omits most of the statistical data. Summaries need not contain all the specific facts and figures in the original document; they provide only an overview of the essential information.

Analysis Paragraphs

An analysis separates complex materials in their different parts and studies how the parts relate to one another. The analysis of simple table salt, for example, would require a deconstruction of its parts—the elements sodium (Na) and chloride (Cl). Then, scientists would study how the two elements interact to create the compound NaCl, or sodium chloride, which is also called simple table salt.

Analysis is not limited to the sciences, of course. An analysis paragraph in academic writing fulfills the same purpose. Instead of deconstructing compounds, academic analysis paragraphs typically deconstruct documents. An analysis takes apart a primary source (an essay, a book, an article, etc.) point by point. It communicates the main points of the document by examining individual points and identifying how the points relate to one another.

Take a look at a student’s analysis of the journal report.

Notice how the analysis does not simply repeat information from the original report, but considers how the points within the report relate to one another. By doing this, the student uncovers a discrepancy between the points that are backed up by statistics and those that require additional information. Analyzing a document involves a close examination of each of the individual parts and how they work together.

Synthesis Paragraphs

A synthesis combines two or more items to create an entirely new item. Consider the electronic musical instrument aptly named the synthesizer. It looks like a simple keyboard but displays a dashboard of switches, buttons, and levers. With the flip of a few switches, a musician may combine the distinct sounds of a piano, a flute, or a guitar—or any other combination of instruments—to create a new sound. The purpose of the synthesizer is to blend together the notes from individual instruments to form new, unique notes.

The purpose of an academic synthesis is to blend individual documents into a new document. An academic synthesis paragraph considers the main points from one or more pieces of writing and links the main points together to create a new point, one not replicated in either document.

Take a look at a student’s synthesis of several sources about underage drinking.

Notice how the synthesis paragraphs consider each source and use information from each to create a new thesis. A good synthesis does not repeat information; the writer uses a variety of sources to create a new idea.

Evaluation Paragraphs

An evaluation judges the value of something and determines its worth. Evaluations in everyday experiences are often not only dictated by set standards but also influenced by opinion and prior knowledge. For example, at work, a supervisor may complete an employee evaluation by judging his subordinate’s performance based on the company’s goals. If the company focuses on improving communication, the supervisor will rate the employee’s customer service according to a standard scale. However, the evaluation still depends on the supervisor’s opinion and prior experience with the employee. The purpose of the evaluation is to determine how well the employee performs at his or her job.

An academic evaluation communicates your opinion, and its justifications, about a document or a topic of discussion. Evaluations are influenced by your reading of the document, your prior knowledge, and your prior experience with the topic or issue. Because an evaluation incorporates your point of view and reasons for your point of view, it typically requires more critical thinking and a combination of summary, analysis, and synthesis skills. Thus evaluation paragraphs often follow summary, analysis, and synthesis paragraphs. Read a student’s evaluation paragraph.

Notice how the paragraph incorporates the student’s personal judgment within the evaluation. Evaluating a document requires prior knowledge that is often based on additional research.

When reviewing directions for assignments, look for the verbs summarize , analyze , synthesize , or evaluate . Instructors often use these words to clearly indicate the assignment’s purpose. These words will cue you on how to complete the assignment because you will know its exact purpose.

Read the following paragraphs about four films and then identify the purpose of each paragraph.

• This film could easily have been cut down to less than two hours. By the final scene, I noticed that most of my fellow moviegoers were snoozing in their seats and were barely paying attention to what was happening on screen. Although the director sticks diligently to the book, he tries too hard to cram in all the action, which is just too ambitious for such a detail-oriented story. If you want my advice, read the book and give the movie a miss.
• During the opening scene, we learn that the character Laura is adopted and that she has spent the past three years desperately trying to track down her real parents. Having exhausted all the usual options—adoption agencies, online searches, family trees, and so on—she is on the verge of giving up when she meets a stranger on a bus. The chance encounter leads to a complicated chain of events that ultimately result in Laura getting her lifelong wish. But is it really what she wants? Throughout the rest of the film, Laura discovers that sometimes the past is best left where it belongs.
• To create the feeling of being gripped in a vice, the director, May Lee, uses a variety of elements to gradually increase the tension. The creepy, haunting melody that subtly enhances the earlier scenes becomes ever more insistent, rising to a disturbing crescendo toward the end of the movie. The desperation of the actors, combined with the claustrophobic atmosphere and tight camera angles create a realistic firestorm, from which there is little hope of escape. Walking out of the theater at the end feels like staggering out of a Roman dungeon.
• The scene in which Campbell and his fellow prisoners assist the guards in shutting down the riot immediately strikes the viewer as unrealistic. Based on the recent reports on prison riots in both Detroit and California, it seems highly unlikely that a posse of hardened criminals will intentionally help their captors at the risk of inciting future revenge from other inmates. Instead, both news reports and psychological studies indicate that prisoners who do not actively participate in a riot will go back to their cells and avoid conflict altogether. Examples of this lack of attention to detail occur throughout the film, making it almost unbearable to watch.

Collaboration

Share with a classmate and compare your answers.

Writing at Work

Thinking about the purpose of writing a report in the workplace can help focus and structure the document. A summary should provide colleagues with a factual overview of your findings without going into too much specific detail. In contrast, an evaluation should include your personal opinion, along with supporting evidence, research, or examples to back it up. Listen for words such as summarize , analyze , synthesize , or evaluate when your boss asks you to complete a report to help determine a purpose for writing.

Consider the essay most recently assigned to you. Identify the most effective academic purpose for the assignment.

My assignment: ____________________________________________

My purpose: ____________________________________________

Identifying the Audience

Imagine you must give a presentation to a group of executives in an office. Weeks before the big day, you spend time creating and rehearsing the presentation. You must make important, careful decisions not only about the content but also about your delivery. Will the presentation require technology to project figures and charts? Should the presentation define important words, or will the executives already know the terms? Should you wear your suit and dress shirt? The answers to these questions will help you develop an appropriate relationship with your audience, making them more receptive to your message.

Now imagine you must explain the same business concepts from your presentation to a group of high school students. Those important questions you previously answered may now require different answers. The figures and charts may be too sophisticated, and the terms will certainly require definitions. You may even reconsider your outfit and sport a more casual look. Because the audience has shifted, your presentation and delivery will shift as well to create a new relationship with the new audience.

In these two situations, the audience—the individuals who will watch and listen to the presentation—plays a role in the development of presentation. As you prepare the presentation, you visualize the audience to anticipate their expectations and reactions. What you imagine affects the information you choose to present and how you will present it. Then, during the presentation, you meet the audience in person and discover immediately how well you perform.

Although the audience for writing assignments—your readers—may not appear in person, they play an equally vital role. Even in everyday writing activities, you identify your readers’ characteristics, interests, and expectations before making decisions about what you write. In fact, thinking about audience has become so common that you may not even detect the audience-driven decisions.

For example, you update your status on a social networking site with the awareness of who will digitally follow the post. If you want to brag about a good grade, you may write the post to please family members. If you want to describe a funny moment, you may write with your friends’ senses of humor in mind. Even at work, you send e-mails with an awareness of an unintended receiver who could intercept the message.

In other words, being aware of “invisible” readers is a skill you most likely already possess and one you rely on every day. Consider the following paragraphs. Which one would the author send to her parents? Which one would she send to her best friend?

Last Saturday, I volunteered at a local hospital. The visit was fun and rewarding. I even learned how to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR. Unfortunately, I think caught a cold from one of the patients. This week, I will rest in bed and drink plenty of clear fluids. I hope I am well by next Saturday to volunteer again.

OMG! You won’t believe this! My advisor forced me to do my community service hours at this hospital all weekend! We learned CPR but we did it on dummies, not even real peeps. And some kid sneezed on me and got me sick! I was so bored and sniffling all weekend; I hope I don’t have to go back next week. I def do NOT want to miss the basketball tournament!

Most likely, you matched each paragraph to its intended audience with little hesitation. Because each paragraph reveals the author’s relationship with her intended readers, you can identify the audience fairly quickly. When writing your own paragraphs, you must engage with your audience to build an appropriate relationship given your subject. Imagining your readers during each stage of the writing process will help you make decisions about your writing. Ultimately, the people you visualize will affect what and how you write.

While giving a speech, you may articulate an inspiring or critical message, but if you left your hair a mess and laced up mismatched shoes, your audience would not take you seriously. They may be too distracted by your appearance to listen to your words.

Similarly, grammar and sentence structure serve as the appearance of a piece of writing. Polishing your work using correct grammar will impress your readers and allow them to focus on what you have to say.

Because focusing on audience will enhance your writing, your process, and your finished product, you must consider the specific traits of your audience members. Use your imagination to anticipate the readers’ demographics, education, prior knowledge, and expectations.

• Demographics. These measure important data about a group of people, such as their age range, their ethnicity, their religious beliefs, or their gender. Certain topics and assignments will require these kinds of considerations about your audience. For other topics and assignments, these measurements may not influence your writing in the end. Regardless, it is important to consider demographics when you begin to think about your purpose for writing.
• Education. Education considers the audience’s level of schooling. If audience members have earned a doctorate degree, for example, you may need to elevate your style and use more formal language. Or, if audience members are still in college, you could write in a more relaxed style. An audience member’s major or emphasis may also dictate your writing.
• Prior knowledge. This refers to what the audience already knows about your topic. If your readers have studied certain topics, they may already know some terms and concepts related to the topic. You may decide whether to define terms and explain concepts based on your audience’s prior knowledge. Although you cannot peer inside the brains of your readers to discover their knowledge, you can make reasonable assumptions. For instance, a nursing major would presumably know more about health-related topics than a business major would.
• Expectations. These indicate what readers will look for while reading your assignment. Readers may expect consistencies in the assignment’s appearance, such as correct grammar and traditional formatting like double-spaced lines and legible font. Readers may also have content-based expectations given the assignment’s purpose and organization. In an essay titled “The Economics of Enlightenment: The Effects of Rising Tuition,” for example, audience members may expect to read about the economic repercussions of college tuition costs.

On your own sheet of paper, generate a list of characteristics under each category for each audience. This list will help you later when you read about tone and content.

1. Your classmates

• Demographics ____________________________________________
• Education ____________________________________________
• Prior knowledge ____________________________________________
• Expectations ____________________________________________

2. Your instructor

3. The head of your academic department

4. Now think about your next writing assignment. Identify the purpose (you may use the same purpose listed in Note 6.12 “Exercise 2” ), and then identify the audience. Create a list of characteristics under each category.

My audience: ____________________________________________

Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.

Keep in mind that as your topic shifts in the writing process, your audience may also shift. For more information about the writing process, see Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” .

Also, remember that decisions about style depend on audience, purpose, and content. Identifying your audience’s demographics, education, prior knowledge, and expectations will affect how you write, but purpose and content play an equally important role. The next subsection covers how to select an appropriate tone to match the audience and purpose.

Selecting an Appropriate Tone

Tone identifies a speaker’s attitude toward a subject or another person. You may pick up a person’s tone of voice fairly easily in conversation. A friend who tells you about her weekend may speak excitedly about a fun skiing trip. An instructor who means business may speak in a low, slow voice to emphasize her serious mood. Or, a coworker who needs to let off some steam after a long meeting may crack a sarcastic joke.

Just as speakers transmit emotion through voice, writers can transmit through writing a range of attitudes, from excited and humorous to somber and critical. These emotions create connections among the audience, the author, and the subject, ultimately building a relationship between the audience and the text. To stimulate these connections, writers intimate their attitudes and feelings with useful devices, such as sentence structure, word choice, punctuation, and formal or informal language. Keep in mind that the writer’s attitude should always appropriately match the audience and the purpose.

Read the following paragraph and consider the writer’s tone. How would you describe the writer’s attitude toward wildlife conservation?

Many species of plants and animals are disappearing right before our eyes. If we don’t act fast, it might be too late to save them. Human activities, including pollution, deforestation, hunting, and overpopulation, are devastating the natural environment. Without our help, many species will not survive long enough for our children to see them in the wild. Take the tiger, for example. Today, tigers occupy just 7 percent of their historical range, and many local populations are already extinct. Hunted for their beautiful pelt and other body parts, the tiger population has plummeted from one hundred thousand in 1920 to just a few thousand. Contact your local wildlife conservation society today to find out how you can stop this terrible destruction.

Think about the assignment and purpose you selected in Note 6.12 “Exercise 2” , and the audience you selected in Note 6.16 “Exercise 3” . Now, identify the tone you would use in the assignment.

My tone: ____________________________________________

Choosing Appropriate, Interesting Content

Content refers to all the written substance in a document. After selecting an audience and a purpose, you must choose what information will make it to the page. Content may consist of examples, statistics, facts, anecdotes, testimonies, and observations, but no matter the type, the information must be appropriate and interesting for the audience and purpose. An essay written for third graders that summarizes the legislative process, for example, would have to contain succinct and simple content.

Content is also shaped by tone. When the tone matches the content, the audience will be more engaged, and you will build a stronger relationship with your readers. Consider that audience of third graders. You would choose simple content that the audience will easily understand, and you would express that content through an enthusiastic tone. The same considerations apply to all audiences and purposes.

Match the content in the box to the appropriate audience and purpose. On your own sheet of paper, write the correct letter next to the number.

• Whereas economist Holmes contends that the financial crisis is far from over, the presidential advisor Jones points out that it is vital to catch the first wave of opportunity to increase market share. We can use elements of both experts’ visions. Let me explain how.
• In 2000, foreign money flowed into the United States, contributing to easy credit conditions. People bought larger houses than they could afford, eventually defaulting on their loans as interest rates rose.
• The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, known by most of us as the humungous government bailout, caused mixed reactions. Although supported by many political leaders, the statute provoked outrage among grassroots groups. In their opinion, the government was actually rewarding banks for their appalling behavior.

Audience: An instructor

Purpose: To analyze the reasons behind the 2007 financial crisis

Content: ____________________________________________

Audience: Classmates

Purpose: To summarize the effects of the $700 billion government bailout

Audience: An employer

Purpose: To synthesize two articles on preparing businesses for economic recovery

Using the assignment, purpose, audience, and tone from Note 6.18 “Exercise 4” , generate a list of content ideas. Remember that content consists of examples, statistics, facts, anecdotes, testimonies, and observations.

My content ideas: ____________________________________________

Key Takeaways

• Paragraphs separate ideas into logical, manageable chunks of information.
• The content of each paragraph and document is shaped by purpose, audience, and tone.
• The four common academic purposes are to summarize, to analyze, to synthesize, and to evaluate.
• Identifying the audience’s demographics, education, prior knowledge, and expectations will affect how and what you write.
• Devices such as sentence structure, word choice, punctuation, and formal or informal language communicate tone and create a relationship between the writer and his or her audience.
• Content may consist of examples, statistics, facts, anecdotes, testimonies, and observations. All content must be appropriate and interesting for the audience, purpose and tone.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

II. Getting Started

2.3 Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Content

Kathryn Crowther; Lauren Curtright; Nancy Gilbert; Barbara Hall; Tracienne Ravita; Kirk Swenson; and Terri Pantuso

Now that you have determined the assignment parameters , it’s time to begin drafting. While doing so, it is important to remain focused on your topic and thesis in order to guide your reader through the essay. Imagine reading one long block of text with each idea blurring into the next. Even if you are reading a thrilling novel or an interesting news article, you will likely lose interest in what the author has to say very quickly. During the writing process, it is helpful to position yourself as a reader. Ask yourself whether you can focus easily on each point you make. Keep in mind that three main elements shape the content of each essay (see Figure 2.3.1). [1]

• Purpose:   The reason the writer composes the essay.
• Audience:  The individual or group whom the writer intends to address.
• Tone: The attitude the writer conveys about the essay’s subject.

The assignment’s purpose, audience, and tone dictate what each paragraph of the essay covers and how the paragraph supports the main point or thesis.

Identifying Common Academic Purposes

The purpose for a piece of writing identifies the reason you write it by, basically, answering the question “Why?” For example, why write a play? To entertain a packed theater. Why write instructions to the babysitter? To inform him or her of your schedule and rules. Why write a letter to your congressman? To persuade him to address your community’s needs.

In academic settings, the reasons for writing typically fulfill four main purposes:

• to classify
• to synthesize
• to evaluate

A classification shrinks a large amount of information into only the essentials , using your own words; although shorter than the original piece of writing, a classification should still communicate all the key points and key support of the original document without quoting the original text. Keep in mind that classification moves beyond simple summary to be informative .

An analysis , on the other hand, separates complex materials into their different parts and studies how the parts relate to one another. In the sciences, for example, the analysis of simple table salt would require a deconstruction of its parts—the elements sodium (Na) and chloride (Cl). Then, scientists would study how the two elements interact to create the compound NaCl, or sodium chloride: simple table salt.

In an academic analysis , instead of deconstructing compounds, the essay takes apart a primary source (an essay, a book, an article, etc.) point by point. It communicates the main points of the document by examining individual points and identifying how the points relate to one another.

The third type of writing— synthesis —combines two or more items to create an entirely new item. Take, for example, the electronic musical instrument aptly named the synthesizer. It looks like a simple keyboard but displays a dashboard of switches, buttons, and levers. With the flip of a few switches, a musician may combine the distinct sounds of a piano, a flute, or a guitar—or any other combination of instruments—to create a new sound. The purpose of an academic synthesis is to blend individual documents into a new document by considering the main points from one or more pieces of writing and linking the main points together to create a new point, one not replicated in either document.

Finally, an evaluation judges the value of something and determines its worth. Evaluations in everyday life are often not only dictated by set standards but also influenced by opinion and prior knowledge such as a supervisor’s evaluation of an employee in a particular job. Academic evaluations, likewise, communicate your opinion and its justifications about a particular document or a topic of discussion. They are influenced by your reading of the document as well as your prior knowledge and experience with the topic or issue. Evaluations typically require more critical thinking and a combination of classifying , analysis , and synthesis skills.

You will encounter these four purposes not only as you read for your classes but also as you read for work or pleasure and, because reading and writing work together, your writing skills will improve as you read. Remember that the purpose for writing will guide you through each part of your paper, helping you make decisions about content and style .

When reviewing directions for assignments, look for the verbs that ask you to classify, analyze, synthesize, or evaluate. Instructors often use these words to clearly indicate the assignment’s purpose. These words will cue you on how to complete the assignment because you will know its exact purpose.

Identifying the Audience

Imagine you must give a presentation to a group of executives in an office. Weeks before the big day, you spend time creating and rehearsing the presentation. You must make important, careful decisions not only about the content but also about your delivery. Will the presentation require technology to project figures and charts? Should the presentation define important words, or will the executives already know the terms? Should you wear your suit and dress shirt? The answers to these questions will help you develop an appropriate relationship with your audience, making them more receptive to your message.

Now imagine you must explain the same business concepts from your presentation to a group of high school students. Those important questions you previously answered may now require different answers. The figures and charts may be too sophisticated, and the terms will certainly require definitions. You may even reconsider your outfit and sport a more casual look. Because the audience has shifted, your presentation and delivery will shift as well to create a new relationship with the new audience.

In these two situations, the audience —the individuals who will watch and listen to the presentation—plays a role in the development of presentation. As you prepare the presentation, you visualize the audience to anticipate their expectations and reactions. What you imagine affects the information you choose to present and how you will present it. Then, during the presentation, you meet the audience in person and discover immediately how well you perform.

Although the audience for writing assignments—your readers—may not appear in person, they play an equally vital role. Even in everyday writing activities, you identify your readers’ characteristics, interests, and expectations before making decisions about what you write. In fact, thinking about the audience has become so common that you may not even detect the audience-driven decisions. For example, you update your status on a social networking site with the awareness of who will digitally follow the post. If you want to brag about a good grade, you may write the post to please family members. If you want to describe a funny moment, you may write with your friends’ senses of humor in mind. Even at work, you send emails with an awareness of an unintended receiver who could intercept the message.

In other words, being aware of “invisible” readers is a skill you most likely already possess and one you rely on every day. Consider the following paragraphs. Which one would the author send to her parents? Which one would she send to her best friend?

Last Saturday, I volunteered at a local hospital. The visit was fun and rewarding. I even learned how to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR. Unfortunately, I think I caught a cold from one of the patients. This week, I will rest in bed and drink plenty of clear fluids. I hope I am well by next Saturday to volunteer again.

OMG! You won’t believe this! My advisor forced me to do my community service hours at this hospital all weekend! We learned CPR but we did it on dummies, not even real peeps. And some kid sneezed on me and got me sick! I was so bored and sniffling all weekend; I hope I don’t have to go back next week. I def do NOT want to miss the basketball tournament!

Most likely, you matched each paragraph to its intended audience with little hesitation. Because each paragraph reveals the author’s relationship with the intended readers, you can identify the audience fairly quickly. When writing your own essays, you must engage with your audience to build an appropriate relationship given your subject.

Imagining your readers during each stage of the writing process will help you make decisions about your writing. Ultimately, the people you visualize will affect what and how you write.

While giving a speech, you may articulate an inspiring or critical message, but if you left your hair a mess and laced up mismatched shoes, your audience might not take you seriously. They may be too distracted by your appearance to listen to your words.

Similarly, grammar and sentence structure serve as the appearance of a piece of writing. Polishing your work using correct grammar will impress your readers and allow them to focus on what you have to say.

Because focusing on your intended audience will enhance your writing, your process, and your finished product, you must consider the specific traits of your audience members. Use your imagination to anticipate the readers’ demographics, education, prior knowledge, and expectations.

Demographics

These measure important data about a group of people such as their age range, their ethnicity, their religious beliefs, or their gender. Certain topics and assignments will require these kinds of considerations about your audience. For other topics and assignments, these measurements may not influence your writing in the end. Regardless, it is important to consider demographics when you begin to think about your purpose for writing.

Education considers the audience’s level of schooling. If audience members have earned a doctorate degree, for example, you may need to elevate your style and use more formal language. Or, if audience members are still in college, you could write in a more relaxed style. An audience member’s major or emphasis may also dictate your writing.

Prior Knowledge

This refers to what the audience already knows about your topic. If your readers have studied certain topics, they may already know some terms and concepts related to the topic. You may decide whether to define terms and explain concepts based on your audience’s prior knowledge. Although you cannot peer inside the brains of your readers to discover their knowledge, you can make reasonable assumptions . For instance, a nursing major would presumably know more about health-related topics than a business major would.

Expectations

These indicate what readers will look for while reading your assignment. Readers may expect consistencies in the assignment’s appearance such as correct grammar and traditional formatting like double-spaced lines and legible font. Readers may also have content-based expectations given the assignment’s purpose and organization. In an essay titled “The Economics of Enlightenment: The Effects of Rising Tuition,” for example, audience members may expect to read about the economic repercussions of college tuition costs.

Selecting an Appropriate Tone

Tone identifies a speaker’s attitude toward a subject or another person. You may pick up a person’s tone of voice fairly easily in conversation. A friend who tells you about her weekend may speak excitedly about a fun skiing trip. An instructor who means business may speak in a low, slow voice to emphasize her serious mood. Or, a coworker who needs to let off some steam after a long meeting may crack a sarcastic joke.

Just as speakers transmit emotion through voice, writers can transmit a range of attitudes and emotions through prose –from excited and humorous to somber and critical. These emotions create connections among the audience, the author, and the subject, ultimately building a relationship between the audience and the text. To stimulate these connections, writers convey their attitudes and feelings with useful devices such as sentence structure, word choice, punctuation, and formal or informal language. Keep in mind that the writer’s attitude should always appropriately match the audience and the purpose.

Read the following paragraph and consider the writer’s tone. How would you describe the writer’s attitude toward wildlife conservation?

“Many species of plants and animals are disappearing right before our eyes. If we don’t act fast, it might be too late to save them. Human activities, including pollution, deforestation, hunting, and overpopulation, are devastating the natural environment. Without our help, many species will not survive long enough for our children to see them in the wild. Take the tiger, for example. Today, tigers occupy just seven percent of their historical range, and many local populations are already extinct. Hunted for their beautiful pelts and other body parts, the tiger population has plummeted from one hundred thousand in 1920 to just a few thousand. Contact your local wildlife conservation society today to find out how you can stop this terrible destruction.”

Choosing Appropriate, Interesting Content

Content refers to all the written substance in a document. After selecting an audience and a purpose, you must choose what information will make it to the page. Content may consist of examples, statistics, facts, anecdotes , testimonies , and observations, but no matter the type, the information must be appropriate and interesting for the audience and purpose. An essay written for third graders that summarizes the legislative process, for example, would have to contain succinct and simple content.

Content is also shaped by tone . When the tone matches the content, the audience will be more engaged, and you will build a stronger relationship with your readers. When applied to that audience of third graders, you would choose simple content that the audience would easily understand, and you would express that content through an enthusiastic tone.

The same considerations apply to all audiences and purposes.

This section contains material from:

Crowther, Kathryn, Lauren Curtright, Nancy Gilbert, Barbara Hall, Tracienne Ravita, and Kirk Swenson. Successful College Composition . 2nd edition. Book 8. Georgia: English Open Textbooks, 2016. http://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/8 . Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License .

• “The Rhetorical Triangle” was derived by Brandi Gomez from an image in: Kathryn Crowther et al., Successful College Composition, 2nd ed. Book 8. (Georgia: English Open Textbooks, 2016), https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/8/ . Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . ↵

The bounds, limits, or confines of something.

A statement, usually one sentence, that summarizes an argument that will later be explained, expanded upon, and developed in a longer essay or research paper. In undergraduate writing, a thesis statement is often found in the introductory paragraph of an essay. The plural of thesis is theses .

The essence of something; those things that compose the foundational elements of a thing; the basics.

A brief and concise statement or series of statements that outlines the main point(s) of a longer work. To summarize is to create a brief and concise statement or series of statements that outlines the main point(s) of a longer work.

To give or relay information; explanatory.

The fusion, combination, or integration of two or more ideas or objects that create new ideas or objects.

To copy, duplicate, or reproduce.

To organize or arrange.

The process of critically examining, investigating, or interpreting a specific topic or subject matter in order to come to an original conclusion.

The subject matter; the information contained within a text; the configuration of ideas that make up an argument.

The choices that a writer makes in order to make their argument or express their ideas; putting different elements of writing together in order to present an argument. Style refers to the way an argument is framed, written, and presented.

To interrupt, stop, or prevent someone or something from coming to pass or getting from one place to the other.

Clear or lucid speech; the expression of an idea in a coherent or logical manner; the communication of a concept in a way that is easily understandable to an audience.

The person or group of people who view and analyze the work of a writer, researcher, or other content creator.

Qualities, features, or attributes relating to something, particularly personal characteristics.

Taking something for granted; an expected result; to be predisposed towards a certain outcome.

Consequences; the impact, usually negative, of an action or event.

Writing that is produced in sentence form; the opposite of poetry, verse, or song. Some of the most common types of prose include research papers, essays, articles, novels, and short stories.

A short account or telling of an incident or story, either personal or historical; anecdotal evidence is frequently found in the form of a personal experience rather than objective data or widespread occurrence.

Verbal or written proof from an individual; the statement made by a witness that is understood to be truth. Testimony can be a formal process, such as a testimony made in official court proceedings, or an informal process, such as claiming that a company’s product or service works.

To express an idea in as few words as possible; concise, brief, or to the point.

The feeling or attitude of the writer which can be inferred by the reader, usually conveyed through vocabulary, word choice, and phrasing; associated with emotion.

2.3 Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Content Copyright © 2022 by Kathryn Crowther; Lauren Curtright; Nancy Gilbert; Barbara Hall; Tracienne Ravita; Kirk Swenson; and Terri Pantuso is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Find Your Ideal Customer Using Target Audience Analysis

Updated on: 1 March 2023

Understanding and recognizing your target audience correctly is, perhaps, the most crucial step in any successful marketing strategy. A well-established target audience can drive a brand’s growth, marketing strategies and equity, leading to the overall improvement of the bottom line. In this post, we will go through the key elements that you will need to conduct a target audience analysis.

What is a Target Audience?

A target audience is the pool of potential customers in your business. It is a group of people who are most likely to be interested in purchasing your product or service. People in an identified target audience share certain similar demographics, such as gender, location, age, socioeconomic status, and education, to name a few.

What is a Target Audience Analysis?

Target audience analysis involves the research of a range of demographics and psychographics. All information obtained is then analyzed to provide useful data that will help to inform consumer insights and, most importantly, customer pain points and buyer personas. 

A few questions that a target audience analysis will help you to answer are:

• Who are your customers and what markets can you capitalize on?
• Who are your competitors?
• How can you reach potential customers?
• Are you reaching the right group of people with the right messages?
• What products or services do they want? 
• How can you personalize the user experience?
• How do the customers benefit from your products/services?
• What is your customer’s price point?
• What are the groups affected by your business or service?

Customer Pain Points

Customer pain points are challenges or issues that a current or prospective customer faces in the marketplace along the buyer’s journey. A few examples of customer pain points are money, health, and communication issues. One key point in a marketing strategy is to identify the pain points to provide solutions that will build confidence and trust among customers.

Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is the detailed description of an individual that best represents your target audience. The persona is a semi-fictional profile that is built on in-depth research. By creating a buyer persona, you can better understand and prioritize the requirements of your audience that will help to create a marketing strategy, which targets your ideal customer segment. (To learn more and to start creating buyer personas check out The Easy Guide to Creating a Buyer Persona with Free Editable Templates ).

Why is it Important?

Customers are at the heart of any business or service. Without their support, a business could not be successful or profitable. Therefore, one of the most important goals of any business is to increase their customer base. In order to do so, it is crucial to identify who best resonates with your product or service, as this can affect your business strategy and product development decisions as well. 

Certain research has shown that without a correctly identified target audience, businesses struggle to keep afloat and to create an effective marketing strategy to reach potential customers . (To know more about marketing intelligence strategy, check out How to Implement a Successful Marketing Intelligence Strategy ).

Benefits of a Target Audience Analysis

• By identifying and targeting audiences that are uniquely interested in your products and services, you can convert interested parties to customers faster
• Ability to put together cost-effective marketing strategies that save valuable resources, time, money and effort.
• Ability to create personalized content that is effective and result-driven.
• Identify the requirements of customers and meet them to increase customer satisfaction.
• Increase the number of customers by increasing the conversion rates.
• Strengthen your market position to increase market share and establish your brand in the market.

What are the Types of Audience Analysis?

There are three main types of audience analysis. 

• Demographic data includes, but is not limited to, age, gender, income, employment status, location, and education.
• Psychographics is a qualitative method that focuses on consumers’ psychological traits, such as values, opinions, attitudes, interests, goals, and lifestyle. Identifying these traits will lead you to understand the potential pain points of your customer segment. However, psychographic data is subjective when compared to demographic data that relies on hard statistics. The main areas to focus on would include interests, hobbies, and opinions.  
• Situational analysis helps to make a realistic assessment of your business by defining potential customers, evaluating projected growth and assessing competitors.

How to Identify Your Target Audience?

There are many ways to identify your target audience. It is always best to use several methods to pin down your target audience to be comprehensive. 

Surveys involve a series of questions asked from a group of respondents. You can ask your selected audience their interests and preferences through a survey. However, before you start, make sure to define your goal, audience to be surveyed, tools and relevant questions. You can use platforms such as Creately’s Likert Scale Template , Google Forms and Survey Monkey. 

Google Analytics

It is no secret that Google is the most popular search engine. Google Analytics collects information from websites and store records. Information collected includes time spent on each site, number of visits, and other important consumer behaviors. This gathered information provides insight into your existing customer base and those visiting new.

Facebook and Instagram (social media sites)

Social media sites are all about creating content and reaching targeted audiences. Users of Facebook and Instagram rely on Insights to inform their content direction. You can track metrics such as likes, follows, shares and profile visits to study what content gets the most engagement.

Competitor Websites

Observe and analyze your competitors’ websites and social media presence. 

Online Forums, Groups and Blogs

Join in a few online groups and forums such as Reddit and Quora to explore and join in relevant discussions. All these forums cover a broad range of topics that you can go through. Also, look into joining and observing niche forums that are relevant to your business and industry blogs.

Interviews are usually conducted between a researcher and a respondent or as a focus group discussion. The interviews may consist of structured or unstructured questions. Focus group discussions involve gathering a group of people in a controlled setting where participants are asked a series of questions or are asked to discuss a product or service. 

Besides the interviews with external parties, you can also reach out to your sales team, customer service and marketing colleagues who are involved in the marketing or business process.

You can get feedback via email or through a website form. Also reviews by customers would help to understand their outlook regarding your services or products.

Key Steps to Follow

Conduct a Market Research About the Industry and Outlook

Research about your industry, including statistics, growth potential, trends and the future outlook. Analyze the target market and understand the marketplace . 

Analyze the Competition

Identify your competitors and conduct a competitor analysis to get a comprehensive view of the market landscape . 

Analyze Your Market Offerings

Look into the problems related to your products or services along with whom it may appeal to.

Research and Identify Your Overall Market 

Collect demographic, location, and psychographic data. From the many identifying data segments collected, select three to five segments to ensure that the pool of customers is not too narrow or big to handle. 

Create Buyer Personas and Market Segments

Put together your ideal customer or buyer persona and segment the market by organizing the groups based on the demographics, psychographics, and other information collected. 

The Final Document

Forecast and note down the lead time, marketing costs, potential sales and other strategies. Put together all information, including the forecasted and target audience related data.

Use Creately for Your Target Audience Analysis

Creately has many tools that can support you in putting together your target audience analysis . 

• Powerful documentation capabilities with doc blocs and formatting to document all information. 
• Templates to get you started easily.
• Ability to create custom databases with multiple types of data sets. 
• Interactive data visualization by dragging and dropping data from any data source. 
• Note panel to add data and information.
• Teamshare to share workspaces and folders with your teammates to collaborate . 
• In-built video conferencing for meetings.

Try  Creately  to streamline your target audience analysis today!

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6 Real-Life Target Audience Examples to Help You Define Your Own (B2B and B2C)

Target audience research allows you to better understand your potential customer(s) and their underlying pain points.

The more you drill down into your high-value audience groups through strategic market segmentation, the closer you are to your next sale.

Learn the ins and outs of target marketing with plenty of examples to inform your strategy.

What Is a Target Audience?

How a target audience differs from a buyer persona, how psychographic and demographic data informs marketing campaigns.

• How To Analyze and Define Your Target Audience

Do Target Audiences Vary by Channel?

3 b2b target audience examples.

• 3 B2C Target Audience Examples

A target audience is a group of consumers within a predefined target market that has been identified as the best recipients for a particular marketing message. And a target market broadly describes B2C or B2B consumers who care about your product or service and, under the right conditions, are most likely to spend money with your company.

An audience is a segment within that market.

For example, the target market for an online bookkeeping tool might include businesses with over $500K in annual revenue.

So a target audience profile for our bookkeeping program might be technology stakeholders with influence on decision-makers at companies that haven’t reviewed their accounting software needs in over two years. It’s much more specific than our target market, which is important because we can craft content marketing collateral that speaks directly to the challenges and needs of this influential group.

To create effective messaging within your marketing campaigns, you first need to define your target audience.

When marketers try to appeal to the broadest possible audience for their products and services, they often end up feeling exhausted without much to show for their efforts. Their messaging seems inauthentic and doesn’t really resonate with anyone in particular.

To create effective messaging within your marketing campaigns, you first need to define your target audience. Doing so will help you engage key decision-makers and eventually convert them into loyal customers.

At this point, you might be asking, “Isn’t that just a buyer persona?” And while the two concepts are similar, they are distinct enough to warrant further discussion.

A buyer persona is a fictional character who represents one of your ideal customers . They have names, occupations, likes and dislikes, as well as challenges and ambitions.

While target audiences are valuable tools for many types of content marketing campaigns, buyer personas tend to be more useful in a B2B context, because they focus on challenges and business information. For example, a B2C company that sells protein bars would not need to create multiple personas, because people from many backgrounds and with varying job titles might purchase their products.

In a B2B context, targeting personas can be extremely valuable, especially when employing content marketing strategies. A SaaS company might create personas for each stakeholder involved in the buying process, for instance. An HR persona might be interested in blog content that addresses common pain points, while a CFO persona would be more interested in white papers with lots of data.

Personas aren’t entirely without value to B2C marketers, however. They can serve as useful guides when crafting messages to engage and inform consumers.

A persona typically includes:

• Personal information: Name, age and geographic location.
• Content preferences: Favorite channels, content formats, tone and style.
• Business background information: Job title, level of influence in decision making processes.
• Objectives: Measurable goals related to the persona’s job.
• Challenges: Frustrations and pain points standing in the way of the persona’s goals.

Your target audiences should be informed by both demographic and psychographic information. The former category describes your intended audience on a superficial level, while the latter describes their motivations.

• Demographics may include cursory information such as gender, age, income and marital status.
• Psychographics include personal interests, attitudes, values, desires and specific behaviors.

When defining and targeting an audience, demographics will only get you so far. For example, if you’re promoting a B2B SaaS solution, your specific audience may be made up of men and women ages 35-49 who earn more than $100,000 annually. That’s all good information to have, but it applies to too broad of a cohort.

Psychographic data for this specific audience could include: worrying about lost resources throughout a supply chain, wanting to eliminate redundancies, or being skeptical of flashy new technology.

Combined, demographic and psychographic information can help you fine-tune your audience targeting goals.

Combined, demographic and psychographic information can help you fine-tune your audience targeting goals. The challenge is where to find this data. Psychographic research may include interviewing existing clients, conducting polls and analyzing your site traffic.

How to Analyze and Define Your Target Audience

Defining the target audience for a particular marketing campaign requires data. Unfortunately, there isn’t a crystal ball that can tell you how to adjust your messages to bring in the right audience. But that’s not to say you can’t trust your gut.

You know your business better than anyone, so combine that experience with hard data to generate a market segment and target audience that is characteristically human, and also strategically defined by scientifically gathered data.

A Three-Step Approach To Defining A Target Audience

1. Conduct target customer research

Your business plan , content marketing strategy, professional experience and prior knowledge of your target customers will lay the foundation for your research. Compile all of your existing intelligence on your target market, and look for opportunities to learn more about it. For example, you might know that most of your customers are senior-level business people, but you may not know if they all have the same job title, or if they all consume content through the same channels.

To uncover key audience insights, use Google Analytics to drill down into your site traffic and perform a deep audience analysis. Custom audience reports can show you demographic and psychographic data, geographic locations as well as the types of technology your site visitors use.

2. Analyze the market

Once you know a little more about your target customers and have compared that data with your business process or goals, it’s time to get some context. Not only are you attempting to place the right messages in front of the right people at the right time, but you’re also competing with potentially thousands of other messages.

Review your competitors’ marketing efforts and business plans to better understand what you’re up against. Likewise, you’ll want to be aware of any other campaigns your business is currently running, as you don’t want to cannibalize your share of audience attention.

3. Define the audience

With hard data in tow and a thorough understanding of your audience’s interests, challenges and needs, it’s time to create a concise target audience to which you can direct your content marketing efforts.

Ask yourself these questions as you work to define your target audience:

• What problems does your product or service solve?
• Which demographic characteristics influence the decision-making process?
• Which psychographic traits impact content consumption?
• How does your audience prefer to engage with brands similar to yours?
• Is your audience segment large enough?

That last question is particularly important, because it will prevent you from sinking resources into ultra-niche campaigns with low ROI. Niche marketing is certainly a useful tactic, but your target audiences should represent a group large enough to reach through social and organic channels.

Knowing your intended audience is only one half of the equation. The next step in the target audience analysis process is to determine where this group consumes content so you can develop an actionable marketing strategy.

Depending on the demographic and psychographic data you’ve collected, some channels will be more effective at engaging your intended audience than others. For instance, some decision-makers in a market segment may be more likely to open an email than to click on a social media ad.

Within channels, a specific audience may prefer unique platforms. B2B buyers are more inclined to seek out information on LinkedIn than Instagram, for example.

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(Keep in mind the following custom audiences are meant to inform specific campaign messages! These companies may have different audience segments for other targeting efforts. Each example is based on a real client I’ve worked with.)

1. Bookkeeping SaaS Solution

Key demographics

• Age range: 35-49.
• Gender: 65% male, 35% female.
• Common job titles: Head of Digital, Senior Accountant, Chief Financial Officer.

Key psychographics

• Values job security.
• Likes to review all the data before making a decision.
• Striving for a better work-life balance.
• Skeptical of solutions that promise to solve all their problems.
• Their current digital solution is showing its age.
• Current lack of third-party integration is slowing down internal processes.
• Boss/shareholder demands are making work stressful.

Preferred channels

• Email for first contact, then phone conversations.
• Browses social media platforms like LinkedIn , mostly looking for news.

Preferred content types

• Data-rich white papers.
• Case studies.

2. Business Travel Company

• Age range: 30-55.
• Gender: 70% female, 30% male.
• Common job titles: Procurement Officer, Travel Buyer, Supplier Relations Expert.
• Values relationships when working with suppliers.
• Dislikes working on repetitive, mundane tasks.
• Is wary of handing off responsibilities to a third party.
• Suppliers fail to deliver on promised rates.
• Doesn’t have enough data to make informed decisions.
• Not familiar with ground-level travel concerns.
• Looks for answers via organic search.
• Communicates with other procurement professionals on social media platforms.
• Easily digestible blog posts.

3. Facility Security Services

• Age range: 45-60.
• Gender: 80% male, 20% female.
• Common job titles: Facility Manager, Head of Security.
• Doesn’t like drawn-out negotiations.
• Likes to be prepared for everything; gets nervous when things are uncertain.
• Prefers to get pitches from two or three companies before making a decision.
• Needs to save costs, but isn’t willing to sacrifice quality of service.
• Needs a third-party supplier with technology integrations.
• Email for marketing materials.
• Blogs and news sites for industry trends.
• Data-rich infographics.
• Email newsletters.

B2C Target Audience Examples

4. athletic shoes.

• Age range: 18-29
• Gender: 60% male, 40% female
• Wants to look stylish, but doesn’t like to follow trends.
• Looks up to sports figures.
• Strongly values friendships and community.
• Loyal to one or two athletic brands.
• Finding athletic footwear that is both stylish and comfortable.
• Loves the look of designer sneakers, but can’t afford them.
• Follows athletes and influencers on social media.
• Watches sponsored events on YouTube.
• Looks for exercise tips on Google.
• Social media posts.
• Image-rich articles.

5. Organic Protein Bars

• Age range: 18-35.
• Gender: 50% female, 50% male.
• Strives to eat food that is nutritious and sustainable, but isn’t always successful.
• Loves to hang out with friends in nature.
• Feels loyalty toward brands with values similar to their own.
• Finds it difficult to eat healthy food when they’re busy.
• Has a limited food budget.
• Needs a protein source that is compact and easy to transport.
• Follows nature photography accounts on Instagram.
• Watches supplement reviews on YouTube.
• Follows health gurus on Twitter.
• Event marketing.

6. Credit Union Mortgage Products

• Age range: 25-39.
• Gender: 50% male, 50% female.
• Enjoys spending time with friends and family at home.
• Tries to spend their money wisely, but isn’t always sure how to do that.
• Craves stability, but fears another economic recession.
• Feels anxious every time they think about having a mortgage.
• Is thinking about mortgages for the first time ever.
• Unclear on the difference between a bank and a credit union.
• Reads online news sites.
• Downloads how-to guides online.
• Watches home-hunting videos on YouTube.

When you have well-defined, custom audiences informed by strong research, you can stop waiting for buyers to stumble upon your brand and start actively pursuing them with precise messaging.

Editor’s note: Updated November 2021.

Michael O'Neill

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Mike O'Neill is a writer, editor and content manager in Chicago. When he's not keeping a close eye on Brafton's editorial content, he's auditioning to narrate the next Ken Burns documentary. All buzzwords are his own.

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How Discovering Your Audience in Writing Will Transform Your Writing

by Sue Weems | 0 comments

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Who are you writing for? Who is your target audience in writing? If you're not sure, you're not alone—and discovering your audience will do wonders for your writing.

I teach literature and composition, which means I spend a lot of time helping students with their writing. Many of them want quick ways to make their writing better. They hope I can show them some magic structure that will make writing easier. There’s no such potion.

But there is one tip I share that produces stronger writing almost every time.

Who Are You Writing For?

For many writers, their formal writing instruction gets in the way of their more creative pursuits. In school, too often students are taught to write canned, formulaic essays that will get them through college entrance exams or high stakes testing. “I need to be objective,” one student tells me, “so that people will believe my argument.”

“Which people?” I ask.

The student blinks at me. “I don’t know. You?”

This student stumbled upon the problem with most formal writing instruction: a lack of authentic audience.

(Now listen. I know the world is full of fantastic teachers who are providing relevant and authentic audiences for student writing. But after twenty years of teaching across the U.S. and overseas, I still see too many students stuck in nondescript five-paragraph essay mode, unable to imagine or engage a real audience.)

When You Don’t Have an Audience in Writing

When you aren’t writing for someone specific, it’s easy to be unclear, unstructured, and uncompelling. Who cares if no one is going to see it?

When I had my writers describe their own experiences writing essays , they came up with a good descriptive list that included: complex, boring, irrelevant, formal, stuffy, and highly structured.

Academic and nonfiction writing can be all of these things, but I would argue the best writing isn’t boring or irrelevant. Not if the writer is invested in the topic or subject matter.

So the question becomes, how do I write a stronger essay (or article or story)? And the extended question, how do I let the right amount of personality and voice into my writing to connect?

The answer is the same: Write for a real audience.

A Creative Writing Exercise Around Your Audience

After my student writers described their academic writing, both process and product, I gave them a quick creative writing exercise. They did not have to share it with anyone. My only requirement is to be honest.

The prompt: Think about a relationship in your life right now that has a problem you haven’t been able to solve yet. Write a letter to that person outlining the problem and exploring possible ways forward.

If they can’t think of a relationship problem, I suggest they expand to a local or community problem that doesn’t have a solution.

As students begin, the room is hushed and busy. There is deep thinking going on. Pens hardly leave the pages, and when I call time, there are always those who want to continue.

I ask students how this exercise differed from their own experiences of academic writing. Immediately, students offer marked differences: I cared about this. It mattered. I didn’t get stuck. It was harder to think through what to write for solutions. I found new ideas.

Students discovered the one shift that boosts motivation and the quality of writing quickly: an audience. In this case, just imagining an audience transformed their experience.

The same is true for fiction writers, too. Stephen King is famous for saying that during his first drafts, he writes for his wife. She is his audience.

Writing for a Public Audience

I talked to Joe Bunting about this a few weeks back, and we both agreed that the moment we started writing in public, we saw our writing progress accelerate.

Writing in private has its place, and I still write in notebooks I plan to burn before I die.

But when you begin to imagine someone out there, a reader, who will absorb your words, suddenly, you’re willing to spend the time needed to get a phrase just right. You search for the metaphor that will resonate with your reader. You take the time needed to make sure ideas flow clearly and logically.

If you’ve been stuck and feel like you’ve stagnated in your writing growth, I challenge you to write for an audience and share your work. You can start with one person or publish weekly posts to a blog that you share.

What if I Don't Know My Target Audience?

It's worth some time thinking and researching your target audience and a secondary audience. If you're writing an article or book you'd like published, knowing the intended audience is required.

Some writers want to say a piece of writing is for everyone, but that is almost never the case. (Go check out the one-star reviews of your favorite critically acclaimed novels if you don't believe me.)

When you think about primary audience, consider who cares about the topic or genre. If you're writing nonfiction, look at books or articles like the ones you're writing . Who is reading them? What types of books do they buy or check out at the library? Why are they seeking out this topic? 

For example, if you're writing fitness related content, it's not enough to know that you're writing for a health conscious audience. That's only the first step of audience awareness. If you've ever come across fitness content on social media , you can likely tell who it is specifically geared toward, whether defined by gender, age, body type, economic status, and a host of other factors. 

The articles and videos created for new moms in urban areas with lots of walkable paths and common areas are going be vastly different from the articles and videos created for muscle-bound men who prefer a garage gym or box workout space. Everything from the tone to the content is shaped differently.

If you're writing fiction, identify the genre you're working in. A mystery target audience will expect much different story elements than someone who picks up a western or a romance . 

If you can picture a person in your target audience as you write, you have a much better chance of meeting their expectations and delivering helpful and compelling writing—whether academic or creative. 

Find Your Audience in Writing

With time and practice, you’ll discover that you’ve made remarkable progress. All from writing for an audience. Give it a try and share your experiences in the comments.

Have you found you are more invested in your writing when you know you are going to share it with someone or a wider audience? Let us know in the comments .

It's your turn: Think of a relationship in your life that has a problem you haven't yet solved. Write a letter to that person outlining the problem and sharing possible steps forward.

Take fifteen minutes to write. When you're done, if you feel comfortable, share your letter in the Pro Practice Workshop here .

If you'd prefer not to share your letter, tell us how it feels to write for a specific person. What was this experience like? Was it different from other writing experience you've had?

Be sure to leave feedback for your fellow writers, too!

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Sue Weems is a writer, teacher, and traveler with an advanced degree in (mostly fictional) revenge. When she’s not rationalizing her love for parentheses (and dramatic asides), she follows a sailor around the globe with their four children, two dogs, and an impossibly tall stack of books to read. You can read more of her writing tips on her website .

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Adapting to Your Audience

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.

Audience Definition

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.

Types of Audiences

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.

Determining your Audience Type

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.

Three Categories of Audience

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 not 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, or 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.

Academic Audiences

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.

Related Information: 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

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.

Related Information: Nonacademic Audience Example

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)

Audience Invoked versus Audience Addressed

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.

Teacher as Audience

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.

Developing Audience Awareness

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.

Defining Audience Awareness

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.

Audience Awareness and Purpose

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.

Editing and Audience Awareness

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.

Assumptions about Audience

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 an Audience

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.

Audience Analysis: Formal verses Informal

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?"

Analyzing Academic Audiences

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?

• Look carefully at the assignment sheet. Does it tell you anything about your teacher’s expectations?

Do you have any models of papers like this written for this prof in the past?

• Ask questions. What more can you learn about the professor’s expectations as a reader by asking directly?

Ask yourself what you know about the professor and about the discipline.

Related Information: Example Academic Audience Analysis: PSY100

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).

• Step One: Look carefully at the assignment sheet. Does it tell you anything about your teacher's expectations?

Analysis What does this assignment ask you to do? " Show the connection " between Milgram's work and the My Lai massacre. What will you need to be able to show the connection? A description of both Milgram's work and the massacre. Will you be able to stop writing once you've described both parts? No--you then need to show the connection. You know that you don't have much space to develop extended descriptions of either Milgram's work or the My Lai massacre. In order to describe both and show the connection between the two, you'll need to keep the descriptions relatively short so that you don't tax your reader's patience.

• Step Two: Do you have any models of papers like this written for this prof in the past?

Analysis Do you already have enough information about Milgram and My Lai? If not, you'll definitely need to do library work and cite your sources appropriately. The paper prompt itself suggests that you look at Milgram's 1974 publication, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View . The paper doesn't ask you to include personal experiences or to contribute personal analysis, although as you draw out the connection you will undoubtedly rely on your interpretation of your sources and your understanding of events.

• Step Three: Ask questions. What more can you learn about the professor's expectations as a reader by asking directly?

Analysis For this paper, you know that your reader is not interested in seeing how you have felt obedient or disobedient in critical situations. Rather, this reader is looking for a more academic (less personal) investigation of the issue of obedience. This reader is trying to determine if you intellectually understand the issue (overobedience to authority), not if you have had pertinent experiences. As a result, the paper will be more formal and academic than if the paper were focused on your own attitudes and experiences.

• Step Four: Ask yourself what you know about the professor and about the discipline.

Analysis Do you know anything else about your reader from sample papers? From other papers you've written for this professor? From this teacher's behavior in class or her/his preferences for certain kinds of arguments and proof? Think carefully about what you've observed about this professor and use that information to help you shape your paper.

Related Information: Example Academic Audience Analysis: BUS402

Your essay should be 7-10 pages.

How effective is studying and discussing hypothetical dilemmas (i.e., studying cases) in preparing you for the pressures of actual dilemmas in the workplace? Develop your answer into an argument synthesis that draws on three or more cases in this chapter. If possible, refer to actual ethical dilemmas with which you've struggled in your own work. (Behrens and Rosen, 815)

Analysis A writer responding to this prompt would first notice that there are three key parts to the assignment:

• Answer the question about effectiveness of cases. The entire paper needs to support the answer.
• Synthesize information and arguments from three sample cases.
• Include personal experience and experience-based critical analysis.

You also know that you have plenty of "room" to develop all three key elements of the assignment because you can take up to ten pages. But this assignment does not specify format, use of outside sources, or level of formality, and so a writer might want to ask the teacher about those points or look closely at sample papers to gather more information.

Analysis You do have samples of cases, though, in the material that the assignment asks you to review. So you will be able to look at those cases and use those to help you write about your own experiences. In other words, your professor will expect you to frame your experiences in much the same way that the sample cases are set up. Your teacher will look for the same kinds of detail in your supporting evidence that appears in the sample cases. By looking carefully at the samples, writers can learn about what to include in their descriptions.

In particular, be sure to find out why the teacher is having you write the paper. Some teachers assign papers to help students learn information or expand their thinking on an issue. For these papers, "conventions" of academic papers are often less important than showing what you’ve learned or thought about. But some teachers assign papers to help students learn what it’s like to write in a specific discipline. For these teachers, academic "conventions" are extremely important.

Analysis You should also ask yourself what you know about your teacher and his or her approach to the discipline. Do you know, for example, that 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" that shows 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 much more about the teacher than you might think, and asking questions about how the teacher treats this material in class will help you to remember those details that can help you shape your paper.

Does the assignment sheet tell you anything about your teacher's expectations?

• Can you tell if the paper needs to cite outside sources? If so, can the sources include interviews, field research, or just library sources?
• Does the assignment indicate whether you can use personal experiences? Personal (critical) analysis?

Use these two questions to help you determine how much of yourself you need to include in a paper. Most professors who expect to see personal experience or personal thinking on an issue say so pretty clearly in the assignment sheet.

• Does the paper have to follow a specific format? If so, what are the labels for parts of the paper? (Experienced writers use these labels to help generate material for the paper.)
• Does the assignment note specifically the level of formality of the paper? Does it, for instance, note that you should write it for possible publication in a journal?
• Does the assignment specifically note expectations about proofreading? (Often, a prof who reminds students about taking care with punctuation and spelling is asking for a more formal as well as a carefully edited paper.)

Use these questions to help you determine how formal or informal your reader expects your paper to be.

A professor who goes to the trouble of telling writers what to do expects to see those elements in a paper and is usually annoyed when writers violate those expectations. So always use the information your professors give you to meet their stated expectations in a paper. Don't assume all profs are the same!

If your professor is willing to give you a sample paper or to send you to look at a journal for examples of professional publications, you can learn a great deal about what your professor expects. Or if you have written papers for this professor before, look at those again to remind yourself of this professor’s expectations. As you look at the models and samples, ask yourself what you can tell about

• outside sources (library materials, interviews, surveys, observational research)
• personal experience or analysis
• formality of language
• standards of proofreading

What can you learn about the professor's expectations by asking directly?

If you haven’t been able to learn much from the assignment sheet or the samples, be sure to ask for more information. In particular, be sure to find out why the teacher is having you write the paper. Some teachers assign papers to help students learn information or expand their thinking on an issue. For these papers, "conventions" of academic papers are often less important than showing what you’ve learned or thought about. But some teachers assign papers to help students learn what it’s like to write in a specific discipline. For these teachers, academic "conventions" are extremely important.

• Is the discipline itself in transition? Do teachers who have just completed their degrees do different kinds of research than teachers who have been established in the profession for 15 years? Do they write different kinds of papers?
• What kinds of research does your professor do in his own work? Does the professor expect you to use the same kinds of research techniques?
• Has your professor assigned paper topics like this one for a number of years? Or is the prof experimenting with a new approach in the paper? (If this is a new assignment or approach, the prof might be more open to having students experiment with a wider range of responses.)
• What kinds of evidence do professionals in this discipline find most convincing? For instance, a philosophy professor might well be convinced by an argument that relies solely on logic and never refers to tangible evidence. An engineering prof, on the other hand, might respond to a logical paper by asking for a mathematical or physical model. Be sure to understand what "counts" as proof in the discipline you’re writing for.

Analyzing Non-Academic Audiences

Some teachers realize that much professional writing for their students is not going to be academic writing. These profs assign papers that specifically ask students to write to non-academic audiences. For example, one professor in Resource Management asks students to write to city council members for one assignment. How can you analyze other audiences to help you adapt your papers for their needs? As we saw when we looked at professors as the main audience, asking questions is one of the best techniques for analyzing audience.

Related Information: Nonacademic Audience Example: HIST342

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)

• Step One: Reasons for Reading

Analysis You know that your audience will include parents, teachers, and other administrators. Because this is a complicated set of readers, you will almost certainly have to decide which ones will be your primary audience and which will be secondary audiences.

Because teachers will use the guidelines in creating their lesson plans, they will be your primary audience. But you cannot forget that parents will be reading the guidelines. Particularly in the preface and in the explanations of guidelines, you'll need to include more background information that will make clear to parents why the school district is making certain decisions about what to include or emphasize in teaching about Columbus.

• Step Two: Background Knowledge

Analysis Both teachers and parents will represent a wide spectrum in terms of knowledge, and you'll want to be sensitive to this issues when writing a document that combines both a complicated task and a diverse (though easily named) audience by balancing the amount of background information you include.

• Step Three: Bias

Analysis Both teachers and parents will represent a wide spectrum in terms of bias. This is a both politically and ethnically sensitive topic and you'll want to be aware to those issues when writing a document that combines both a complicated task and a diverse (though easily named) audience.

• Step Four: Other Possible Areas of Interest

Sometimes readers are shaped by their occupations, income levels, and political or religious affiliations. If these related areas seem important to your readers and to your topics, be sure to learn as much as you can so that you can shape your paper to be effective with these readers.

Reasons for Reading

• Why is this audience interested in reading your paper?
• Do they plan to base budget or policy decisions on your paper?
• Do they need background information?
• Are they looking for evidence of problems or solutions?

If you can determine just what your readers need from your paper, then you can be sure to give them the information or analysis they’re looking for. Always begin, then, by asking questions about why readers are reading!

Background Knowledge

• Are you writing to readers who have a great deal of information on your topic or those who know little about it?
• Have your readers had first-hand experience with your topic or are they likely to know only what they’ve read about it elsewhere?

The more you can determine about what your readers already know, the better able you will be to fill in background information they need or to skip details they already know in favor of more important "new" information and arguments.

• Do your readers have strong opinions about the topic you’re writing about?
• Have they already reached a conclusion that you need to change?
• Do they have any presuppositions that you need to take into account as you write your paper?
• Does gender make a difference on the topic you’re writing about? For instance, women tend to react much more strongly than men to issues of personal safety, and if you were writing about adding lights to public parking lots, the gender makeup of your audience might well affect the shape of your paper.
• Is age important to your topic? Again, senior citizens living on fixed retirement incomes often react differently than younger people on a wide range of topics.
• Can you think of any other biases that might affect your audience and thus your presentation of ideas in your paper? For instance, a paper directed to the city council probably should take account of members’ bias toward or against development.

Other Possible Areas of Interest

Writing for an audience.

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.

Writing Purpose

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.

Details to Consider

Consider the following information about the expectations of your audience:

• Will the audience expect outside sources to be cited? What types of sources? Dated or current sources? Primary or secondary sources? Sources from academic journals or popular magazines? Should Internet sources be cited?
• Will the audience expect personal experience to be used? In the introduction? As evidence in the body of the text?
• Will the audience expect the text to be written in the first-person ("I") or in the third-person?
• Will the audience understand technical terms? Will they expect long explanations or definitions of key terms? Will they expect you to use the jargon of the field?
• Will the audience expect particular formats? Will they expect an essay, an article, a laboratory report? Will the text have a table of contents, a reference list, a title page, headings and subheadings, and extensive graphics or tables?

Readers versus Audience

Steve Reid, English Department To me a reader is an important concept to think about when you're writing for an audience. If you're thinking about writing for readers, generally, then what you need to do is ask yourself questions about how do readers process information. How do they make meaning, and how do they access key ideas in text and what are readers expectations when they pick up a printed text? Obviously those are going to vary from one discipline to the next. I like to make the distinction in my own mind between audience, i.e. target group of people who might pick up what I've written and read it, and readers who may have expectations about what's going to be in text. Readers may expect things to be in paragraphs. Readers may look for topic sentences. Readers will certainly try to anticipate what the overall claim is. Readers need cues about how to move from one section to the next. It's useful also to think, not just about target audience, but about how readers actually process textual information.

You can make the distinction between your audience as a target group (i.e., the group of people who may be attracted to your subject matter or your point-of-view) and your audience as readers (actual people who read your text, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word.)

An audience is the group of people who will be attracted to your writing. They may share certain subject interests, social or political beliefs, or certain demographic features. Once you know something about your target audience, you have some idea about their expectations of the subject, format, and style of writing.

When you use the term, "readers," however, you are, in addition, thinking about how your audience processes your text, or how they actually read. In addition to being interested in your ideas, these actual readers must wade through your words and sentences. Writers need to learn to anticipate the needs of their readers as well as the interests of their audiences.

Related Information: Guidelines for Readers

• A title or lead-in that focuses accurately on the content of the text . Readers don't like to be mislead about the focus of the text.
• Some sentences or paragraphs that set the context for this topic . Readers like to know why they should read this text.
• Sentences that give the thesis, claim, or main point of the text . Readers want to know the main point in order to process the information in the text.
• Paragraphs that focus on a single main idea . Readers like to deal with one major idea at a time, to avoid becoming confused.
• Transitions between paragraphs or major ideas . Readers like to know how the previous idea is connected or related to the next idea.
• Supporting evidence, facts, examples, statistics . Readers want some proof for assertions that your text makes.
• Clear sentences and an error-free style . Readers don't want to be distracted by awkward sentences, spelling errors, or grammatical problems.

Appealing to an Audience

Donna Lecourt, English Department At the first level, the appeal begins even in choice of topic, according to what the audience might already know as well as what the "concerns/issues" of that audience are in that context. (e.g. don't write about why Hamlet wanted to kill himself, or write about how Hamlet made you "feel" about your mother to an English professor). Then, at the next level, once it's influenced how you've chosen a topic and formulated a thesis, it influences what kind of proof you can use to prove or persuade. In other words, part of an appeal to the audience is to use the type of information they find the most valuable. Other appeals concern thinking about what they already find true, and trying to logically begin from there (e.g., We all accept X, so thus Y must be true.) Of course, you also appeal in terms of style (fitting the norms of the community as well as simply trying to amuse, not be pedantic, etc.). Finally, appeals involve how the writer presents herself, that is, what kind of persona does she create on paper.

Citation Information

Stephen Reid, Kate Kiefer, and Dawn Kowalski. (1994 - 2013). Adapting to Your Audience. The WAC Clearinghouse. Colorado State University. Available at https://wac.colostate.edu/repository/writing/guides/.

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