AUDIENCE ANALYSIS

TECHNICAL WRITING
Why?
• As an engineer, you will need to communicate with several different
audiences and possibly all in one document. For example, should you
draft a technical report on your latest project, the company president
will be more interested in the executive summary and the financial
reporting whereas fellow experts will be more interested in the
technical details of the project and you can easily communicate with
them using charts, mathematical expressions, and technical terms.
Both audiences will read the entire document, but focusing those
areas to each group will allow you to communicate your purpose
more efficiently and effectively.
Analyzing Your Audience’s Needs

• Here are some key questions to ask when determining the readers’ needs
during your preparation:
• Who specifically is your reader? Are there multiple readers?
• What do your readers already know about the subject?
• Do you need to modify your message for international readers? Are there
cultural issues that you need to address or avoid?
• As a writer, your most important responsibility is determining who makes
up your audience. You should continue to analyze your audience
throughout the composing process. You can build a legitimately accurate
representation of your audience by asking yourself key questions before
and while you write.
Specific VS General Audience

SPECIFIC GENERAL
• Expert • Layman Audience
• Peer • Low Technicality
• Highly Technical • Avoid JARGONS/
• Explain unavoidable Jargons
• USE SPECIALIZED LANGUAGE
Types of Audience
• Primary audience
• Those who receive the communication directly and are also known as
the target audience. The person is also usually the decision maker.
• Secondary audience
• The readers who are not the primary addressee, but are still included
as viewer.

• This typical business memo is being directly sent to Stan Jobs, who is
the main, or primary, audience. Linda Smith, the sender, has also
decided to send George Jones a copy of this message, as shown on
the CC line of the memo.
Memo
• To: Basit, Ali PRIMARY AUDIENCE

• From: Raza, Shah

• Cc: Sarmad, Security In-charge SECONDARY AUDIENCE

• Date: 3/2/17
• Re: New Parking Policy to start 2/4/17
Types of Audience
• Types of Audiences
• One of the first things to do when you analyze and 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 use the new product to accomplish their tasks;
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?
• 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 report 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
report.
• 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.
Analysis Examples

• 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.
• 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.
• Strengthen transitions. It may be difficult for readers, particularly
nonspecialists, to see the connections between the main sections of
your report, 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.
• 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.
• reate 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!
• 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-personal
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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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,
• 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.
• 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 fine tune their work and make it as readily understandable as
possible. And in contrast, it's the accumulation of lots of problems in
• Using Bias-Free Language
• Technology has not only made our lives easier but it has bridged our
World closer together making it accessible to conduct business on
global level. When adapting a message to your audience, be sure to
use language that is both unbiased and sensitive. Use caution with
expressions could be biased in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, age,
and disability. Avoid use of idioms and phrases as they are often
confusing or offensive in other cultures.