Writing is a critical competency in contemporary life, from text messaging to writing a professional synopsis appropriate for LinkedIn, to writing memos and reports at work, to writing a simple “thank you” email.  Most of us write every day, for a variety of purposes.

All writing exists in context.  You usually create writing for a specific reading audience to read, with a specific purpose or outcome in mind, whether that audience consists of your co-workers, your boss, your peers in a community endeavor, your peers in an online course, or even yourself.  However, active consideration of context often happens subconsciously, if at all.  Many people, when confronted with a writing task, simply sit down and start writing, just to get words and concepts identified, and to “get it done.”

Developing competence in writing, though, includes learning how to consciously consider writing contexts, and then use that consideration to make decisions about the writing’s content, tone, format, and more, in order to create effective written communication.

One way of visualizing and bringing into consciousness the context for all types of communications—written, spoken, visual—is called the rhetorical triangle.  It identifies what happens in any communication situation: a communicator sends a message with a particular purpose to a particular audience.  All points of the rhetorical triangle need to operate in sync for the message to be effective.  For example, think of the experience you may have had when the points were not in sync—maybe when you tried to follow a set of directions to use a new technical device, or attempted to assemble a children’s toy with many parts.  Very often the writer was not aware of the reading audience’s needs and thus did not clearly define steps in the process, or did not clearly explain and illustrate each piece.

The three key factors—purpose, author, and audience—all work together to influence what the text itself says and how it says it.

Purpose

Any time you prepare to write, ask yourself, “Why am I writing?” All writing, no matter the type, has a purpose. Purpose will sometimes be given to you (by a manager or professor, for example), while other times you decide for yourself. As the author, it’s up to you to make sure that purpose is clear not only for yourself, but also—especially—for your audience. If your purpose is not clear, your audience is not likely to receive your intended message.

There are, of course, many different reasons to write (e.g., to inform, to entertain, to persuade, to ask questions), and you may find that some writing has more than one purpose. When this happens, be sure to consider any conflict between purposes, and remember that you will usually focus on one primary purpose.

Why Purpose Matters

• If you ever listened to a lecture or read an essay and wondered “So what?” or “What is this person talking about?” then you know how frustrating it can be when an author’s purpose is not clear. By clearly defining your purpose before you begin writing, it’s less likely that you’ll be that author who leaves the audience wondering.
• If readers can’t identify the purpose in a text, they usually quit reading. You can’t deliver a message to an audience who quits reading.

Useful Questions to Determine Purpose

Consider how answers to the following questions may affect your writing:

• What is my primary purpose for writing? How do I want my audience to think, feel, or respond after they read my writing?
• Do my audience’s expectations affect my purpose? Should they?
• How can I best get my point across (e.g., tell a story, argue, cite other sources)?
• Do I have any secondary or tertiary purposes? Do any of these purposes conflict with one another or with my primary purpose?

Audience

In order for your writing to be most effective, you have to think about the audience you’re writing for and adapt your writing approach to their needs, expectations, backgrounds, and interests. Being aware of your audience helps you make better decisions about what to say and how to say it. For example, audience characteristics as much as you can, you’ll have a better idea if you need to define or explain any terms, and you can make a more conscious effort not to say or do anything that would offend your audience.

Sometimes you know who will read your writing, for example, if you are writing an email to your boss. Other times you’ll have to guess who is likely to read your writing, for example, if you are writing a newspaper editorial. You will often write with a primary audience in mind, but there may be secondary and tertiary audiences to consider as well.

Useful Characteristics to Consider about Audience

When analyzing your audience, consider these points. Doing this should make it easier to create a profile of your audience, which can help guide your writing choices.

Background Knowledge or Experience — In general, you don’t want to merely repeat what your audience already knows about the topic you’re writing about; you want to build on it. On the other hand, you don’t want to talk over their heads. Anticipate their amount of previous knowledge or experience based on elements such as their age, profession, or level of education.

Expectations and Interests — Your audience may expect to find specific points or writing approaches, especially if you are writing for work or school. Consider not only what they do want to read about, but also what they do not want to read about.

Attitudes and Biases — Your audience may have predetermined feelings about you or your topic, which can affect how hard you have to work to win them over or appeal to them. The audience’s attitudes and biases also affect their expectations.  For example, if they expect to disagree with you, they will likely look for evidence that you have considered their side as well as your own.

Demographics — Consider what else you know about your audience, such as their age, gender, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, political preferences, religious affiliations, jobs or professional backgrounds, and areas of residence. Think about how these demographics may affect how much background your audience has about your topic, what types of expectations or interests they have, and what attitudes or biases they may have.

Applying Audience Analysis to Your Writing

Here are some general rules about writing, each followed by an explanation of how audience might affect it. Consider how you might adapt these guidelines to your specific situation and audience. (Note: This is not an exhaustive list.  Also, you likely will not use all of these approaches in a single communication.)^[1]

Add information readers need to understand your document (and omit information readers don’t need). Part of your audience may know a lot about your topic, while others don’t know much at all. When this happens, you have to decide if you should provide explanation or not. If you don’t offer explanation, you risk alienating or confusing those who lack the information. If you offer explanation, you create more work for yourself, and you risk boring those who already know the information, which may negatively affect the larger view those readers have of you and your work. In the end, you may want to consider how many people need an explanation, whether those people are in your primary audience (rather than a secondary audience), how much time you have to complete your writing, and any length limitations placed on you. In a written document, you can always include an addendum with additional information for those who need it.

Change the level of the information you currently have. Even if you have the right information, you might be explaining it in a way that doesn’t make sense to your audience. For example, you wouldn’t want to use highly advanced or technical vocabulary in a document for trainees in a specific field, or even in a document for a general audience, such as the audience of a daily newspaper, because most likely some (or even all) of the audience won’t understand you.

Add examples to help readers understand. Sometimes just changing the level of information you have isn’t enough to get your point across, so you might try adding an example. If you are trying to explain a complex or abstract issue to an audience with a lower level of expertise, you might offer a metaphor or an analogy to something they are more familiar with to help them understand. Or, if you are writing for an audience that disagrees with your stance, you might offer examples that create common ground and/or help them see your perspective.

Change the level of your examples. Once you’ve decided to include examples, you should make sure you aren’t offering examples your audience finds unacceptable or confusing. For example, some professionals find personal stories unacceptable in work-related writing, so you might use a metaphor instead.

Change the organization of your information. Again, you might have the correct information, but you might be presenting it in a confusing or illogical order. If you are writing a paper about physics for a physics professor who has his or her Ph.D., chances are you won’t need to begin your paper with a lot of background; however, you probably want to include background information in the beginning of your paper if you’re writing for a fellow student in an introductory physics class.

Strengthen transitions. Transitions are words that show specific connections between thoughts.  “However” or “therefore” mean an opposite or different thought is coming, while “and” and “also” show that more of the same type of thought is coming. Make decisions about transitions based on your audience’s expectations and needs.

Write stronger introductions—both for the whole document and for major sections. In general, readers like to get the big picture up front. You can offer this in your introduction and thesis statement in an academic essay, in an executive summary in a business proposal, or in smaller introductions to major sections within your document. You should, however, also consider how much time your audience will have to read your document. If you are writing for a boss who already works long hours and has little or no free time, you wouldn’t write a lengthy executive summary that rambles on before getting into the information your boss is looking for.

Create topic or focus sentences or headings for paragraphs and paragraph groups.  In academic writing, topic sentences (usually the first sentence of a unit of support) offers readers a preview of what’s coming and how that information relates to your overall purpose or thesis. In a professional document, focus sentences or headings can greatly help your readers get a sense of the flow and linkage of ideas in the document.

Change sentence style and length. Using the same types and lengths of sentences can become boring after awhile. If you already worry that your audience may lose interest in your issue, you may want to work on varying the types of sentences you use.

Use visuals. Visuals and graphics can be another way to help your audience understand an abstract or complex topic. Sometimes a graphic might be more effective than a metaphor or step-by-step explanation. Visuals may also be an effective choice if you know your audience is going to skim your writing quickly; a visual can be used to draw the reader’s eye to information that you want to highlight.

Author

The final unique aspect of anything written down is who, exactly, is doing the writing. In some sense, this is the part you have the most control over—it’s you who’s writing, after all! You can harness the aspects of yourself that will make the text most effective to your audience and purpose.

Analyzing yourself as an author allows you to make explicit to your audience why they should pay attention to what you have to say.

Useful Questions Regarding Author

• What personal motivations do you have for writing about this topic?
• What background knowledge do you have on this subject matter?
• What personal experiences directly relate to this subject? How do those personal experiences influence your perspectives on the issue?
• What formal training or professional experience do you have related to this subject?
• What skills do you have as a communicator? How can you harness those in this project?
• What should audience members know about you, in order to trust what you have to tell them? How will you convey that in your writing?

View the following video to review the concept of the rhetorical triangle.  Note that although the speaker focuses on the purpose of persuading an audience about an issue, the information relates to writing for any purpose.

Format

Although the rhetorical triangle doesn’t discuss format, being conscious of expected format is an added consideration when you need to write. Below are brief explanations of some basic formats.

Academic Essay

Business Proposal

Memo/Email

Business Report