Writing to an Audience

All writing (and communication, in general) shares some elements.

1. Audience
2. Purpose
3. Style
4. Tone
5. Organization

Those are just some of the elements common to all writing/communication, regardless of situation, context, or type. We’ll be discussing all of them during this course, but we’re going to start with the most important one on the list, the one that impacts almost all of the others: audience.

Why does audience matter?

Audience matters because it can (and does) change everything about the way you communicate with other people. Whether you’re always aware of it or not, you already think about and adjust your behavior and choices because of audience. Most of us don’t speak to our friends in quite the same way as we do our family or our co-workers.; many students change the way they write as well, including bigger words and fancier phrases in essays than they do in text messages.

That’s all normal and often unconscious. It’s so common that it even has a name: code switching.

That video uses President Obama as an example of someone code switching to better reach his many different audiences. That’s so familiar to us that it’s even become fodder for comedy sketches.

Odds are, when you watched those videos, you found yourself nodding along in familiarity. That’s because code switching and adjusting to our audience is something we all do on a daily basis. And it isn’t just about meeting the expectations of any audience; we adjust and switch things up because of what we want or need from a particular audience.

Think about your own life. If you need a friend to pick you up or give you a ride somewhere, you’re asking for something. If you want to convince your boss to give you a raise at work, that’s still you asking someone for something that will benefit you. Same sort of situation, right?

But you don’t ask the same way, do you?

The same idea holds true when you write. Most students are already aware of this concept and we’re not breaking any new ground here. What is new, for many students, is the idea of making conscious choices in writing, choices aimed at accomplishing a specific purpose and reaching a specific audience. The need for those choices is there whether you’re writing an academic essay, an email to a professor, or a professional document in a work setting.

The chapters in this section of the book are going to focus on identifying, understanding, and reaching different audiences and the techniques you can use to ensure that your writing effectively communicates your purpose to your audience.