Catering your writing for particular audiences TECM 4250 Dr. Lam

General observations from presentations 1.Explicitly forecast and restate the stages for your audience E.g., DNA testing is done in 3 stages: blah, blah2, and blah3. 2.Avoid extraneous information Introduction should provide the reader with enough information to understand the process, but not everything about the topic E.g., Information about pros/cons of bitcoin mining is not immediately relevant to the process itself

Catering your writing in 2 steps 1.Analyzing your audience 2.Making specific/strategic changes based on your analysis

So, what actually is audience analysis? 1.Asking the right questions 2.Answering them Through intuition/logic Through research

The right questions See page 7 of your WtW textbook for a list of questions

Making changes to the document Focus on altering few key categories: Content Writing style Organization Document Design Use of photographs and visuals

Content Alter how much detail to include based on what the audience knows and what they will care about. E.g., provide a more detailed definition for a novice or exclude a common definition for expert Alter how you present the actual content E.g., Use of metaphor for novices ( 5) 5

Exercise In groups, take the process you researched yesterday and complete an audience analysis by: 1.Answering the key questions for a novice and expert audience on page 7. You can make assumptions about each audience as needed. 2.After the answer to each question, specifically state how you will alter content, style, organization, document design, or use of visuals.