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The audience of a technical document—or any piece of writing for that matter—is the intended or potential reader or readers. For most technical writers, this is the most important consideration in planning, writing, and reviewing a document. You "adapt" your writing to meet the needs, interests, and background of the readers who will be reading your writing.
The principle seems absurdly simple and obvious. It's much the same as telling someone, "Talk so the person in front of you can understand what you're saying." It's like saying, "Don't talk rocket science to your six-year-old." Do we need a course in that? Doesn't seem like it. But, in fact, lack of audience analysis and adaptation is one of the root causes of most of the problems you find in professional, technical documents—particularly instructions where it surfaces most glaringly.
Notes:
- Once you've read the section on audiences, try using the audience planner. You fill in blanks with answers to detailed questions about your audience and then e-mail it to yourself and, optionally, to your instructor.
- Also, this chapter includes a section on situation planner. Try using the situation planner to develop an idea of the situation in which your audience finds itself.
Types of Audiences
One of the first things to do when you analyze an audience is to identify its type (or types—it's rarely just one type). The common division of audiences into categories is as follows:
- Experts: These are the people who know the theory and the product inside and out. They designed it, they tested it, they know everything about it. Often, they have advanced degrees and operate in academic settings or in research and development areas of the government and technology worlds. The nonspecialist reader is least likely to understand what these people are saying—but also has the least reason to try. More often, the communication challenge faced by the expert is communicating to the technician and the executive.
- Technicians: These are the people who build, operate, maintain, and repair the stuff that the experts design and theorize about. Theirs is a highly technical knowledge as well, but of a more practical nature.
- Executives: These are the people who make business, economic, administrative, legal, governmental, political decisions on the stuff that the experts and technicians work with. If it's a new product, they decide whether to produce and market it. If it's a new power technology, they decide whether the city should implement it. Executives are likely to have as little technical knowledge about the subject as nonspecialists.
- Nonspecialists: These readers have the least technical knowledge of all. Their interest may be as practical as technicians', but in a different way. They want to understand the new power technology enough to know whether to vote for or against it in the upcoming bond election. Or, they may just be curious about a specific technical matter and want to learn about it—but for no specific, practical reason.
Audience Analysis
It's important to determine which of the four categories just discussed the potential readers of your document belong to, but that's not the end of it. Audiences, regardless of category, must also be analyzed in terms of characteristics such as the following:
- Background—knowledge, experience, training: One of your most important concerns is just how much knowledge, experience, or training you can expect in your readers. If you expect some of your readers to lack certain background, do you automatically supply it in your document? Consider an example: imagine you're writing a guide to using a software product that runs under Microsoft Windows. How much can you expect your readers to know about Windows? If some are likely to know little about Windows, should you provide that information? If you say no, then you run the risk of customers' getting frustrated with your product. If you say yes to adding background information on Windows, you increase your work effort and add to the page count of the document (and thus to the cost). Obviously, there's no easy answer to this question—part of the answer may involve just how small a segment of the audience needs that background information.
- Needs and interests: To plan your document, you need to know what your audience is going to expect from that document. Imagine how readers will want to use your document; what will they demand from it. For example, imagine you are writing a manual on how to use a new smart phone—what are your readers going to expect to find in it? Imagine you're under contract to write a background report on global warming for a national real estate association—what do they want to read about; and, equally important, what do they not want to read about?
- Different cultures: If you write for an international audience, be aware that formats for indicating time and dates, monetary amounts, and numerical amounts vary across the globe. Also be aware that humor and figurative language (as in "hit a home run") are not likely to be understood outside of your own culture. Texas A&M University makes available Chapter 6, "Writing for International Readers," of Reporting Technical Information, Elizabeth Tebeaux, et al. For standards, see List of style guides from Wikipedia. (Thanks to the anonymous guest who contributed these important ideas.)
- Other demographic characteristics: And of course there are many other characteristics about your readers that might have an influence on how you should design and write your document—for example, age groups, type of residence, area of residence, gender, political preferences, and so on.
Audience analysis can get complicated by at least two other factors: mixed audience types for one document, wide variability within audience, and unknown audiences.
- More than one audience. You're likely to find that your document is for more than one audience. For example, it may be seen by technical people (experts and technicians) and administrative people (executives). What to do? You can either write all the sections so that all the audiences of your document can understand them (good luck!). Or you can write each section strictly for the audience that would be interested in it, then use headings and section introductions to alert your audience about where to go and what to avoid in your document.
- Wide variability in an audience. You may realize that, although you have an audience that fits into only one category, there is a wide variability in its background. This is a tough one—if you write to the lowest common denominator of reader, you're likely to end up with a cumbersome, tedious book-like thing that will turn off the majority of readers. But if you don't write to that lowest level, you lose that segment of your readers. What to do? Most writers go for the majority of readers and sacrifice that minority that needs more help. Others put the supplemental information in appendixes or insert cross-references to beginners' books.
Audience-Analysis Example
If you are taking a technical-writing course, you may be expected to append an audience description to your technical documents. Here's an example:
| Note to Instructor: These instructions are intended for individuals who want to streamline their calculations using Microsoft Excel using macros to efficiently compute their data. They understand how to input data into Microsoft Excel and have basic knowledge of the Microsoft Office Suite. They are comfortable using Windows software and are comfortable with basic arithmetic abilities to verify their calculations and check for logic errors in computing. |
Audience Adaptation
Okay! So you've analyzed your audience until you know them better than you know yourself. What good is it? How do you use this information? How do you keep from writing something that will still be incomprehensible or useless to your readers?
The business of writing to your audience may have a lot to do with in-born talent, intuition, and even mystery. But there are some controls you can use to have a better chance to connect with your readers. The following "controls" have mostly to do with making technical information more understandable for nonspecialist audiences:
- Add information readers need to understand your document. Check to see whether certain key information is missing—for example, a critical series of steps from a set of instructions; important background that helps beginners understand the main discussion; definition of key terms. (See the chapter on ideas on content for details.)
- Omit information your readers do not need. Unnecessary information can also confuse and frustrate readers—after all, it's there so they feel obligated to read it. For example, you can probably chop theoretical discussion from basic instructions.
- Change the level of the information you currently have. You may have the right information but it may be "pitched" at too high or too low a technical level. It may be pitched at the wrong kind of audience—for example, at an expert audience rather than a technician audience. This happens most often when product-design notes are passed off as instructions.
- Add examples to help readers understand. Examples are one of the most powerful ways to connect with audiences, particularly in instructions. Even in noninstructional text, for example, when you are trying to explain a technical concept, examples are a major help—analogies in particular.
- Change the level of your examples. You may be using examples but the technical content or level may not be appropriate to your readers. Homespun examples may not be useful to experts; highly technical ones may totally miss your nonspecialist readers.
- Change the organization of your information. Sometimes, you can have all the right information but arrange it in the wrong way. For example, there can be too much background information up front (or too little) such that certain readers get lost. Sometimes, background information needs to be consolidated into the main information—for example, in instructions it's sometimes better to feed in chunks of background at the points where they are immediately needed. (See the chapters on structure and organization of information in a document.)
- Strengthen transitions. It may be difficult for readers, particularly nonspecialists, to see the connections between the main sections of your document, between individual paragraphs, and sometimes even between individual sentences. You can make these connections much clearer by adding transition words and by echoing key words more accurately. Words like "therefore," "for example," "however" are transition words—they indicate the logic connecting the previous thought to the upcoming thought. You can also strengthen transitions by carefully echoing the same key words. In technical prose, it's not a good idea to vary word choice—use the same words so that people don't get any more confused than they may already be. (See the chapter on transitions.)
- Write stronger introductions—both for the whole document and for major sections. People seem to read with more confidence and understanding when they have the "big picture"—a view of what's coming, and how it relates to what they've just read. Therefore, make sure you have a strong introduction to the entire document—one that makes clear the topic, purpose, audience, and contents of that document. And for each major section within your document, use mini-introductions that indicate at least the topic of the section and give an overview of the subtopics to be covered in that section. (See the chapter on introductions both for whole reports and for sections within reports.)
- Create topic sentences for paragraphs and paragraph groups. It can help readers immensely to give them an idea of the topic and purpose of a section (a group of paragraphs) and in particular to give them an overview of the subtopics about to be covered. Roadmaps help when you're in a different state! (See the chapter on using overviews and topic sentences.)
- Change sentence style and length. How you write—down at the individual sentence level—can make a big difference too. In instructions, for example, using imperative voice and "you" phrasing is vastly more understandable than the passive voice or third-person phrasing. For some reason, personalizing your writing style and making it more relaxed and informal can make it more accessible and understandable. Passive, person-less writing is harder to read—put people and action in your writing. Similarly, go for active verbs as opposed to be verb phrasing. All of this makes your writing more direct and immediate—readers don't have to dig for it. (See the chapter on common sentence-style problems for details.)
And obviously, sentence length matters as well. An average of somewhere between 15 and 25 words per sentence is about right; sentences over 30 words are to be mistrusted. - Work on sentence clarity and economy. This is closely related to the previous "control" but deserves its own spot. Often, writing style can be so wordy that it is hard or frustrating to read. When you revise your rough drafts, put them on a diet—go through a draft line by line trying to reduce the overall word, page or line count by 20 percent. Try it as an experiment and see how you do. You'll find a lot of fussy, unnecessary detail and inflated phrasing you can chop out. (See the chapter on common sentence-style and clarity problems for details.)
- Use more or different graphics. For nonspecialist audiences, you may want to use more graphics—and simpler ones at that. Graphics for specialists are more detailed, more technical. In technical documents for nonspecialists, there also tend to be more "decorative" graphics—ones that are attractive but serve no strict informative or persuasive purpose at all. (See the chapter on graphics for details.)
- Break text up or consolidate text into meaningful, usable chunks. For nonspecialist readers, you may need to have shorter paragraphs. Maybe a 6- to 8-line paragraph is the usual maximum. Notice how much longer paragraphs are in technical documents written for specialists.
- Add cross-references to important information. In technical information, you can help nonspecialist readers by pointing them to background sources. If you can't fully explain a topic on the spot, point to a section or chapter where it is. (See the chapter on cross-references for details.)
- Use headings and lists. Readers can be intimidated by big dense paragraphs of writing, uncut by anything other than a blank line now and then. Search your rough drafts for ways to incorporate headings—look for changes in topic or subtopic. Search your writing for listings of things—these can be made into vertical lists. Look for paired listings such as terms and their definitions—these can be made into two-column lists. Of course, be careful not to force this special formatting—don't overdo it. (See the chapters on headings and lists for details.)
- Use special typography, and work with margins, line length, line spacing, type size, and type style. For nonspecialist readers, you can do things like making the lines shorter (bringing in the margins), using larger type sizes, and other such tactics. Certain type styles are believed to be friendlier and more readable than others. (Try to find someone involved with publishing to get some insights on fonts.)
These are the kinds of "controls" that professional technical writers use to finetune their work and make it as readily understandable as possible. And in contrast, it's the accumulation of lots of problems in these areas—even seemingly trivial ones—that add up to a document being difficult to read and understand. Nonprofessionals often question why professional writers and editors insist on bothering with such seemingly picky, trivial, petty details in writing—but they all add up! It reminds me of the ancient Chinese execution method called "death by a thousand cuts." However, in this case, it would be "perplexity by a thousand minor problems."
Audience Situation
It is not enough merely to define a specific audience for a technical-writing project. You need to know the situation in which this audience operates—what its goals are: solve a problem, enable improvement, support decision making? Situations for report writing are probably as infinite as human social relations. A report situation involves an audience needing or requesting a certain type of report (document) for its specific needs and uses.
Summary of latest developments. In this situation, an organization (for-profit company or government entity) or individual needs a summary of the "latest" on research and development in some field (technological, medical, architectural, astronomical, etc.). The information must be readable by people not specialized in the field and not slanted for or against the research and development. The information must enable the recipients to make decisions.
Guide on task performance. In this next situation, an organization needs some sort of guide for staff doing certain tasks. The situation might include doing a seminar at the organization and leaving the guide for staff future reference. (This should not be a typical company policy and procedures.)
Special-interest promotion. In this situation, a national or state interest group wants to promote something about its special interest (for example, green roofs). They need good writers to develop a guide or white paper to present their information convincingly.
Understandable technical summary for students. In this next situation, high school teachers or college teachers of introductory science, medical technology, engineering courses need a unit developed that will be effective with non-majoring freshmen and sophomores.
Understandable technical summary for clients. In this situation, counselors and advisers (high school, college, government agencies) need in-depth but understandable information on a topic so thay can knowledgeably advise clients (students, citizens).
Understandable technical summary for citizens. Similar to the preceding situation, legislators (local, state, national) need in-depth but understandable information on a topic so thay can speak on this topic intelligently and knowledgably to citizens and other legislators.
I would appreciate your thoughts, reactions, criticism regarding this chapter: your response—David McMurrey
