Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's1 Categories of Readers by Function A primary audience of people who have a direct role in responding to your document. A secondary audience of people who need to stay aware of developments in the organization.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's2 Categories of Readers by Expertise Expert Technician Manager General reader

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's3 Examples of Experts A physician trying to understand the AIDS virus who delivers papers at professional conferences and writes research articles for scholarly journals. An engineer trying to devise a simpler, less expensive test for structural flaws in composite materials. A forester trying to plan a strategy for dealing with the threat of forest fires during droughts.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's4 Writing Guidelines for an Expert Target Audience Include theory. Include technical vocabulary. Include formulas. Include sophisticated graphics.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's5 Upper-Level Managers Consider Questions Such as the Following: Is current technology at the company becoming obsolete? How expensive are the newest technologies? How much would they disrupt operations if they were adopted? What other plans would have to be postponed or dropped altogether? When would the new technologies start to pay for themselves? What has been the experience of other companies that have adopted these new technologies?

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's6 Writing Guidelines for a Manager Target Audience Focus on managerial implications, not technical details. Use short sentences and simple vocabulary. Put details in appendices.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's7 Writing Guidelines for a Technician Target Audience Include graphics. Use common words, short sentences, and short paragraphs. Avoid excessive theory.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's8 Writing Guidelines for a General Reader Target Audience Use short sentences and paragraphs. Use human appeal. Use an informal tone.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's9 In Thinking About Who Your Reader Is, Consider Six Specific Factors: The reader’s education. The reader's professional experience. The reader's job responsibility. The reader's personal characteristics. The reader's personal preferences. The reader's cultural characteristics.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's10 In Thinking About Your Reader's Attitudes and Expectations, Consider Three Factors: Your reader's attitude toward you. Your reader's attitude toward the subject. Your reader's expectations about the document.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's11 In Thinking About How Your Reader Will Use Your Document, Consider Four Factors: Your reader's reasons for reading your document. The way your reader will read your document. Your reader's reading skill. The physical environment in which your reader will read your document.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's12 Seven Major Cultural Variables That Lie on the Surface Political Economic Social Religious Educational Technological Linguistic

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's13 Six Cultural Variables That Lie Beneath the Surface Focus on individuals or groups. Distance between business life and private life. Distance between ranks. Nature of truth. Need to spell out details. Attitudes toward uncertainty.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's14 As You Consider This Set of Cultural Variables, Keep Four Points in Mind: Each variable represents a spectrum of attitudes. The six variables do not line up in a clear pattern. Different organizations within the same culture can vary greatly. An organization's cultural attitudes are fluid, not static.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's15 Eight Guidelines for Communicating More Effectively with Multicultural Audiences Limit your vocabulary. Keep sentences short. Define abbreviations and acronyms in a glossary. Avoid jargon unless you know your readers are familiar with it. Avoid idioms and slang. Use the active voice whenever possible. Be careful with graphics. Be sure someone from the target culture reviews your document.

Chapter 5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin's16 Why Documents from Different Cultures Are Becoming Like Each Other in Their Design and Use of Graphics International business is increasing each year. The use of the Web is increasing dramatically. Most communicators around the world are using the same word-processing software.