WRITING FOR AN AUDIENCE

A writer of technical documents should have a clear idea of who is likely to read the document, and what they might need to know. The writer should also consider what the readers can be expected to already know, and what basic concepts or instructions will need to be explained. Writing a manual on how to properly maintain a new car designed for young people will greatly differ from a report by the research and development manager for the board of directors. Likewise a ‘How to use’ brochure for a new domestic electrical appliance will require a different emphasis from one for a specialised task for a surgeon.

The person who will be reading a document is your audience. You must understand who they are, the level of detail they need, how they process information and how they will use the document.

In some cases where your audience is a broad demographic e.g. ‘young people’, you will need to assume your audience has no prior experience of a topic. If however, your audience are third-year apprentice car mechanics (and you are privy to their level of understanding), your writing style can be more technical, and you can assume they will understand more specific terminology.

The key to successful technical writing is to keep it simple and know your audience. In many cases, documents are aimed at a large, variable readership. In that case, the writer should include enough content to allow uninformed readers, as well as informed readers, to understand, and use a formal, precise, neutral style of writing to make the document easy to read. Especially when writing to a very broad, general audience (e.g. writing instructions for a washing machine), your writing should always meet the readers’ basic expectations of factual, unemotional language and adequate, clearly written information.

Understanding the Audience
In technical writing an author would do well to put himself in the position of the reader. This is an active process whereby the writer needs to stop doing the writing and shift thinking, rereading the piece as if from the reader’s perspective and asking if I were in the shoes of someone who knew nothing/very little about this, could I follow the process or understand discussion. This is a very difficult skill to master.

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