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.
In order to accurately profile the readers, one must first understand the types of readers. These are the writer, primary readers, secondary readers and tertiary readers. It is very important one target all of these audiences. Often time, consideration towards the tertiary ready is neglected. This can lead to controversy, which was evident in the example of the leaked letter written by Donald Rumsfeld. This letter was only targeted at the primary and secondary readers but was leaked tertiary readers.
While writing it is also important to consider what each audience is looking to get out of the writing. One should determine what the needs, values and attitudes of the audience are, to determine this. It is recommended one utilize the internet and search engines, such as Google or AltaVista, to help determine the needs, values and attitudes of the audience. After analyzing the needs of all of the audiences, one can write it in a manner that caters to all of these needs.
If the document that is being written might be read by an international audience it is important to take cultural expectations into considerations. Many countries expect different styles and structure of writing, compared to America’s typical writing style. There are several strategies that can be employed to aid in the writing of documents that target international audiences. One of the most important strategies is to state the objectives and purpose clearly. Another imperative strategy is to be as polite as possible. In order to achieve this, use full names and salutations, and also use politeness markers.
The strategies discussed in this reading lay down the fundamentals for successfully targeting your audience. By determining one’s audience and catering to their needs, one can easily create a document that can easily transmit its ideas and concepts.
I found it interesting just
I found it interesting just how much this chapter makes you consider the readers of our future and past documents. I must say that I had never considered all of the different types of readers and situations that my writing may be subject to. The threat and/or possibility of tertiary readers is also very interesting to think about, considering the fact that your document may fall into the wrong hands, it may be difficult at times to censor a document accordingly. In our business of Computer Information Technology, we will often work with people from other cultures. I feel this chapter will assist us in our future endeavors.
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Response
I agree that the tertiary reader is most interesting in chapter 3. As an engineer, most put things in perspective and easily pay attention to problems they might encounter. However, technical writing was never introduced in our curriculum until now and can have the same potential issues as engineers encounter in project work. This chapter made sense to the fragile nature of the documents we, as engineers, will be making. Primary and secondary evaluators are what most pay attention to during writing. But I am willing to bet that the tertiary is commonly overlooked. The effects of such a mistake can be hazardous and endanger a company severely. Combined with the nature of engineers, with this concept most can create effective documents with the appropriate amount of information.
I enjoyed learning about the
I enjoyed learning about the tertiary reader because I had never really taken time to think about the possibility of the tertiary reader. I feel that it is most important for the technical writing to be well written for the primary reader in order for the writing to properly achieve what it is intended to achieve, but the writer does stand a chance of their work being criticized by a reader who was not actually supposed to be the reader. If a reader happens to write a great writing for the primary reader, that is actually very offensive to the tertiary reader the writer could end up being publicly criticized for a writing that was actually a good piece. It is a very difficult to please every single person that reads a writer's work but a writer should try to consider multiple reader's point of view while writing.
Reply
Ben, I agree with your statement about taking all ends of the audience into consideration. I found the letter written by Donald Rumsfeld very interesting. It never really occurred to me previously how a document could wind up in the hands of a tertiary audience member. Writing for this outermost audience is sometimes difficult. I wrote in another post about how much of a challenge this could prove to be. I think it’s definitely imperative to cater to your primary audience, yet as the reading stated all end of the audience must be accounted for. While this may be a challenge I do agree it will effectively create a much more ample document.