Re: Audience Awareness

[Rose Wilcox <RWILC -at- FAST -dot- DOT -dot- STATE -dot- AZ -dot- US>]

Dan the Man writes:

>Personaly, I've never found "audience awareness" to be useful.  If I'm
>not clearly explaining the material to begin with, then being aware of
>my audience isn't going to help.  I am not aware of this audience.  I
>simply try to communicate.

While this is a good point, I have always found defining the audience,
purpose, and scope for each document an important starting point
in a project.  For instance, a document aimed to the network support
people will have a different level of terminology than a document
aimed to the network users.  In fact, by asking my clients to define
the audience for the document they say they want, I have often
helped them clear their thinking about what they *really* want.

Case in point: someone in our organization sent me a hodge-podge
of files documenting various aspects of installing NT Windows and
of supporting NT Windows.  Asking the people responsible
 who and what and why helped them decide they really needed
two things: 1) clear, generic instructions for installing NT regardless
of the specific server and network setup and 2) generic WAN-wide
standards including information about where the individual LAN
you are supporting can vary.  The audience is LAN-support people
out in the field.  The writers were WAN-people who oversee all
the interconnected LANs.  They were looking at the information
from their point of view until I helped them define their audience.

Rosie
rwilc -at- fast -dot- dot -dot- state -dot- az -dot- us
ncrowe -at- primenet -dot- com

"Although our information is incorrect, we do not vouch for it."
Erik Alfred Leslie Satie