English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Chapter 3 of Readers and Context of Use shows how useful knowing your audience can be in your writings. By doing a little research and planning ahead of time, it can make your writing much more understandable and effective in getting your goals across. The reading also points out the importance of thinking about all your potential readers and not only focusing on the primary audience.

Chapter Three, Readers and Contexts of Use, stresses that knowing your readers is very essential to communicate successfully when using technical communication. Another important point from this chapter is that the writer needs to realize who will be reading their document and how to present their information to those types of people.

I found it interesting that the author(s) chose to separate the readers into so many different audiences. I completely agree with the description of the primary audience, and think that this is often the most important audience to identify. These are the people who will be reading the document the most and have the most influence on the way the document should be written. While I don’t disagree with the definitions of the other audiences, I think the reading makes the distinction between these audiences too clear.

In chapter three there is one main idea that gets supported throughout; know your audience. In this reading the audience is first broken down by whether they are a primary, secondary, or tertiary reader. Next it is suggested that you keep in mind the proper context that the reader will be in when they are reading it, which is broken down by physical, economic, political, and ethical contexts. Lastly the writer is to keep in mind cultural differences of their audience.

Chapter three in the reading titled Readers and Context of Use teaches us as writers how to reach out and be specific to the audience we intend to speak to. What I learned in this reading is that in order for you to be a good technical writer you need to be familiar with the audience you intend to reach. You need to know the profiles of the people you are speaking to. You also need to keep in mind the ethnic or cultural background of the audience because many different cultures have different ways of reading and writing.