Chapter 3, "Readers and Context of Use" stresses how important it is to know one's readers and write with that knowledge in mind.
I found the section on profiling readers quite useful. It breaks down the profiling process into six basic questions that the writer can ask himself: who, what, where, when, why, and how. If the writer correctly answers these questions to himself, his work will be much better tailored towards his readers.
The chapter also mentions that there are several categories of readers: the action takers, advisors, evaluators, and gatekeepers. Writers who do not carefully profile their audience might only consider the action takers, but this is not enough. Even though the action takers may be satisfied with the document, the advisors may not be. This can be a problem since the advisors usually have power over the action takers. If the writer does not consider the evaluators, he can attract bad publicity or reviews ultimately damaging his reputation (e.g., Rumsfeld’s memo in the chapter). Lastly, the gatekeepers make the decision of whether the document is ready to be published, so it is also important that the writer is aware of them.
I like how the chapter mentions that a useful way to profile one’s readers is through the use of a search engine such as Google. I did not know before that “+” can be used to force the presence of a search term in the results and that a “-“ can be similarly used to force absence.
The end of the chapter gives some useful tips for writing for different cultures. For example, when attempting to write a persuasive essay for a largely Chinese audience, the writer must mostly rely on facts rather than persuasive tactics and wording.
In conclusion, this chapter effectively provides several interesting insights about identifying readers and tailoring the document for those readers.
Response
I also had not thought about profiling readers with search engines. I have known about using quotations in search engines but I did not know about using +,-, and wild card figures. I have always kept my readers in mind when writing, but never really thought about profiling that in-depth. It would be much easier to tailor a paper for that audience when you know more about them. I never thought that it was very important to know that much about an audience until I read this chapter. After reading, however, it seems obvious that not only is it a good thing to know about your audience, it can be very damaging to not know your audience.
Reply
I think that with your second paragraph you offer forth something, a necessary clarification, that chapter 3 of TCT omits. You did well in denoting the different possible users of the document, be they action takers, advisers, evaluators, or gatekeepers, but your real world examples take the explanation a step further and really give depth to that which the source text omitted. I also agree that chapter 3 proposes some interesting methods one can use to research and profile his or her users; primarily, search engines. Although brief, this section of the reading did well to outline different techniques we can utilize to find out more about the types of users we will need to consider when writing technical documents.
Reply
In your second paragraph, I liked the way you stated how writers may not always write to all the categories of readers, only to the action takers. I have seen this situation before when I worked for a mechanical contractor this summer. I was installing ductwork in a new office building, using the proposal as a guide to install them correctly. I did just what the papers said, but I soon found out I was doing them wrong from my angry boss. I showed him the paperwork, and I was off the hook. This shows that the writer of the proposal did not consider the advisors or the evaluators when writing it, and it caused unnecessary hassle and money.
Comment on blog
The search engine "+" and "-" system always surprised me too. I think I learned that quite awhile ago in school but never found a good way to use the technique. Especially in searching for companies and information about them the technique seems to be kind of difficult. Usually businesses have main web pages that all the information about them is on. Looking back on Rumsfeld's letter in Chapter 3, I think you are right that he did not consider the evaluators and ultimately damaged his reputation. I also think that he probably did consider the evaluators and only sent the document to the recipients in the opening of the letter. Because Rumsfeld is important government official, I think that the document should not be read by the normal public. There are probably a million documents like this memo that are worse than this leaked document.