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Professional Writing

Understand Your Audience

As mentioned in the introduction, when engaging with professional writing it is important to focus on your audience and their needs before drafting and writing your message. In professional writing, it is essential to understand your audience before engaging in any professional writing.

Here are the three questions you will need to ask yourself before you start to write:

  1. Who, specifically, is your reader? Are there multiple readers?
  2. What do your readers already know about the subject matter or topic?
  3. Do you need to modify your message if your readers are international? Are there cultural issues that you need to address or avoid?

Once you can identify your audience or reader(s), decide on type of communication that will best service your audience’s knowledge, ability, and interests.

Here are two examples that show the importance of taking the audience into account before writing.

When a physician refers a patient to a specialist for “exantherma”, the patient is more likely to understand the term “skin rash”.

As a writer in the field of health sciences, it is important to write appropriately for your audience as it could save their lives. Patients will not have to keep a medical dictionary on-hand to look up terminology and meaning.

Engineers will mostly likely need to communicate with several different audiences in one document.

For instance, when you draft a technical report on a project, the company president would be more interested in the executive summary and financial reporting whereas fellow colleagues or experts will be more interested in the technical details of the project which can be communicated through use of charts, mathematical calculations/expressions, and other related technical terms.

Both sets of audiences will read the entire document; however, by tailoring specific sections of the document for each group, you will be able to communicate more efficiently and effectively.

Check out these slides to learn about different types of audiences

 

Target Audience by Vanessa Nino

Bias-Free Writing

Using bias-free language helps demonstrates sensitivity to your audience’s background and needs.

It is important to avoid using expressions or language that are biased in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, age, and disability. Using idiomatic language and slang can be confusing and offensive in other cultures.

Here are some web resources on how to practice non-biased language in professional writing:

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