The Role of Audience in Effective Writing

The function of professional communication is to inform, report, record, and to persuade-often at the same time in different areas for different audiences: in development, production, promotion, sales, and evaluation. Any proposal, report, letter, or memorandum is the organized and timely presentation of relevant information directed to a particular individual or group to achieve a specific purpose. Each must be appropriate to the level of the reader and the type of information conveyed. To achieve their purpose, writers must be aware of the needs and influence of their readers, depending on logical and persuasive presentations of essential and controlled ideas. Good communication does not mean that the receiver must agree with the sender, only that he or she clearly understands the message sent.

Good writers, as do good speakers, appreciate and understand the basic relationships involved in the information exchange process—the Who, to Whom, the What, the When, and the Why. Just as they carefully collect and study the data for their messages, writers must also study their intended audience interests and different audience levels. For example, a report written to top management probably would not contain all the technical procedures found in an analysis written for a technician or specialist. Material written for a financial vice president would properly emphasize more the roles of financial return and investment in the research project. The writer sending the same report to multiple levels of audience would have to identify with the least specialized receiver. This could entail including more background material and eliminating much of the specialized technical or scientific vocabulary or providing good definitions for any included. For instance, in explaining the process of chemical sludge activation to a chemically uninformed audience, the micro-organisms could become the "workers" and the chemical change their "duty" in the process.

It could also mean rearranging the order of the sections so that the discussions of the more technical data would appear last with the summary of the import of the project placed first. The writer could adapt the conventional formal scientific report pattern to the understanding and needs of the audience.

The triangular diagram above indicates the information needs by the various audiences in the hierarchy of institutions, businesses, plants, and firms. It also reveals the reading habits at each audience level.

The sender, writer, or encoder hopes to have the message received by the audience, reader, or decoder as nearly like he or she sent it as possible; that is have the ideas similarly interpreted and understood. However, since an individual is the product of a unique environment, perfect communication is probably not ever possible as the background and attitudes of any sender or receiver will never exactly coincide. Too much deviation from the way the sender sends the message to the way the intended receiver interprets it could result in a communication "breakdown." This means some type of "noise" enters the message along the way. This noise could be the result of anything from careless mechanics and word usage to errors in judgment, inadequate information, or jumbled and wordy sentence structure.

The two sentences below appear innocent enough but each harbors a problem that could trigger a serious communication failure:

"He stated that his supervisor had rented the storage for a hundred dollars a week."

"Without oil transportation in this country as we know it would not be possible."

The first sentence contains an ambiguous word—"rent." Does his supervisor receive the rent or pay out the rent? The second sentence needs a comma after oil before it can make much sense.

An audience, of course, can react in various ways: read the communication with interest and act on it, file it, pass it on to a colleague or another department for possible action, ignore it, or toss it out. If one or the other of the last two alternatives becomes the case, then the sender may somehow have misunderstood his or her role, mistaken the interest or mood of the receiver, failed to provide sufficient information, or been careless in the tone or manner and style of writing. Moreover, an audience can be hostile, skeptical, receptive, or supportive. The communication for the hostile and skeptical will require some additional persuasive efforts and some adjustment in tone and the number and type of facts provided. The receptive and supportive audience will be responsive to and satisfied with any clear, concise presentation of appropriate data.

Various factors can affect the influence and acceptability of a piece of communication. Important among these is the way the audience perceives the sender. If the receivers respect the writer as a well-informed, capable, and reliable information source, they will also give more credence to a proposal or report submitted to them. The sender can earn and enjoy this respect only if his or her messages consistently reflect good logic and indicate that the ideas or concepts are the result of careful research and attention to details. Dependence on superficial knowledge coupled with poor English usage skills will do little to inspire reader respect and confidence.

Closely related to this factor is the way the writer perceives his or her role in a communication situation. Senders who feel pressured to impress rather than express evidence a certain insecurity in their abilities and knowledge. This insecurity reflected in their writing can further detract from any respect or confidence hoped for from associates or superiors.

Writers must also consider how a company may use their material. Knowing this will provide them with further insight into the nature of their writing commitment. If a document is to enter a retrieval system or is to serve as an official record, the writer might assume an almost infinite potential audience for it. This would require definition of any technical or scientific terminology, large quantities of documentation, and careful analyses. Additional explanation would be crucial if lay clients or technical assistants were involved. However, a relatively informal memorandum sent to colleagues would not need to define all the jargon nor offer the same amount of documentation, definitions, and support.

Another consideration is the amount of time a reader might have to commit to the reading or study of any particular document. Often readers do not have time to read a document from cover to cover. If so, the writer must summarize the key points at the outset and preface the work with a good summary or abstract. This could be particularly important for readers that might not be knowledgeable in the subject yet have some obligation and need to be familiar with its major ideas or proposals. Often the immediate audience will not be a colleague or the supervisor of the department. The document also could pass to many departments in a company for appraisal or be retained in retrieval disks or in files for years awaiting the action of a more distanced reader. "Effective Writing"