English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Chapter 3, Readers and Context of Use, dealt primarily with the importance of understating your target audience, and tailoring your writing style and presentation to best coincide with their needs and norms. The reading suggested ways to create a concise profile about your readers (primary, secondary, tertiary, and gatekeepers) by examining their needs as it pertains to the information you will be presenting, their overall company values, and their attitudes towards you and the information you will be presenting.

After reading the categories of audiences and types of contexts of technical writing, your work can effectively influence the proper type of person accordingly. The several types of categories explained in Chapter 3 are to benefit the writer to be more aware of the potential individuals evaluating their work. It is important to keep everyone in mind while completing a piece of work because often many people write unintentional inappropriate things. The type of audience that I was most concerned about was the tertiary reader.

After reading Chapter 3, Readers and Context of Use, the book discusses the importance of profiling your audience and describing their needs, values, and attitudes. In preparation of identifying your readers, the chapter goes in detail of how using a Reader Chart will help you understand the various people who’s reading your document. In addition, the book deals with profiling the context of use which can strongly influence how your audience will interpret what message you’re trying to convey.

In chapter 3, Readers and Contexts of Use, the idea of knowing your audience and how to effectively communicate with them is introduced. In order to be an effective writer one must be able to present information or ideas in a way that allows everyone to understand. To achieve this goal the writer must evaluate the type of person that will be reading the particular document, its purpose, and formatting.

Chapter 3’s focus on the target audiences and contexts of technical writing made me view some of my personal experiences and writing techniques from a new perspective. Personally I’ve dealt with technical writing in past job experiences and even in a global team. Both the idea of adequately targeting all ends of your audience and writing in the appropriate context has made me evaluate the way I write.

I think that Chapter 3—Readers and Contexts of Use in Technical Communication Today was an appropriate way to begin our class. For the last four years I have worked in sales and I found that many of the concepts related to context are true in writing and sales. Learning and adapting to your audience's physical, economic, political and ethical contexts can improve either your sales or readership. I most recently worked in Ohio selling corn and soybean seed and the fact that I'm from Michigan became an ethical issue for many Ohio State fans which hindered our relationship.

This chapter was very interesting. I never realized that there was so much to consider about your audience when writing a document. Many valid points are made as to why audience analysis is important and why a document may be totally ignored if certain guidelines aren’t followed. One must take special care when writing a document so that it will be useful to its intended audience, but it will also be informative to its unintended audiences.

In my opinion, the concept of the tertiary reader is almost too vague of an idea for most writers to worry about. From my point of view, it seems almost impossible to accommodate for every possible tertiary reader. The reading gives the example of trying to remember who your tertiary readers are, as well as making sure that you do not write anything that could reflect poorly on you or your company. I feel that the process of identifying all of the possible tertiary readers and accommodating your writing to suit them is, to some extent, a ridiculous task.

After reading chapter 3 in "Readers and Contexts of Use" in Technical Communication Today, the importance of profiling the readers to effectively target your audience in technical writing, was evident.

After reading Chapter 3, “Readers and Context”, from Technical Communication Today, I liked how emphasized how to write to audiences was. When writing to audiences you have to keep a few thoughts in mind while researching and writing your articles. The main focus is having a strong connection with the readers by knowing who they are, their needs, and when, where, and why they are reading the article.