Audience is defined as who will read or hear what you are writing. There could be many different types of audiences such as known, multiple, unknown, etc. In order to get a good grasp of your audience, you must complete some sort of audience analysis to get a good understanding of who you are writing to. Things to consider in such an analysis are their level of education, their knowledge on the topic, how they might feel about the particular topic, or if the topic is relevant to them. Knowing your audience is essential to achieving your purpose for composing the document, as well as the content of the document.

One example where I had to consider audience was when composing my memo. Although it was my first major assignment, I feel that I already had a decent understanding of how to analyze the audience. The memo had to be addressed to City College president, Vincent Boudreau. We had to address a certain issue at the school and try to convince Mr. Boudreau that it should be fixed. Therefore, I did some research on Mr. Boudreau to find out his level of education, job responsibilities at the school, some personal characteristics, his potential attitude towards the topic at hand, cultural considerations, and his physical environment when reading the document. All of these elements of the audience would help me get a better understanding of how I should write to the president and what topics to put more emphasis on, or which topics to avoid.

This document can be found under the assignments tab, titles “Memo”.

Figure 1. Audience Analysis Sheet on Vincent Boudreau

I feel that the audience analysis sheet gave me a good understanding of audience from the beginning of the semester, however, I feel that in my technical description, I slightly regressed in my ability to focus in on a specific audience. Rather than being specific, my technical description had a very broad audience. I struggled to narrow it down since I was writing a description on a WD-40 can, so I said the audience was anyone that purchased a WD-40 can. Since then, I have revised my paper and changed the audience to anyone interested in the function of WD-40 or aerosol cans.

Figure 2. Audience Analysis sheet for Technical Description