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. I really liked this section of the chapter because of how explicit and clear it made how to think when researching for your audiences so that you can think more then just on why they are reading the article.
Also, this chapter highlighted identifying the different audiences the article is being written for; the primary, secondary, and the tertiary. It is important to write using your prior knowledge of a topic, familiarity, or skill level, because it enhances your communication with the reader. Knowing this it allows you to focus your attention to the different types of readers your article will attract, and not just one large all-encompassing group. With this you can use profiling to your advantage by knowing how to be interesting and capturing your audience’s attention before they give up reading the article.
This chapter has a great example of learning how to research a specific topic with the use of the web. Using +, - , and “” to help refine your search topics will bring you closer to the specific information you are searching for. I already knew about the + sign while using internet search engines, but not about the other signs. This chapter helped me understand this technique so I can use it for future references when researching.
Further into the chapter it described how the international and cross cultural communications are effected by how an article is presented with information and how the different cultures read and write their language. For example English is read left to right and Chinese is read right to left. From this information, the writer knows where to place information, so that the reader can most effectively obtain the message that is being presented without having the reader skim through the material and possibly overlook the important information.
Over all I liked how this chapter has explained the thought process while writing an article to a specific group. Having the 5w categories in mind while researching and writing has already helped my thought process.
Blog comment
Yeah the reading right to left would definitely change how you would place a picture in a document or important information. That’s why I wonder if a company that was international would alter an important document because of all the countries’ different styles. Especially in a document had to be translated properly, the translation alone might alter the document’s feel. After translated the document then has to be reconstructed to make it proper to the country. This might make a writer unhappy to find out that what they wrote was altered. Also hopefully none of the important information does not get skipped over like you wrote.
Dean Basso