Communicating with nontechnical audiences: How much do they know?

Abstract

The importance of approaching an audience as a rhetorical consideration of the intended reader's community and its cultural contexts for writing is explored. An approach is presented to audience analysis that examines the nontechnical reader's community culture using three questions: How does this reader's community value my subject? What writing conventions operate in this reader's community? How much background knowledge is a member of this community likely to have? The author describes how a technical writer can choose an appeal based on values shared with the intended reader, and then present shared and new information in ways that accommodate the reader's needs for understanding unfamiliar technical subjects.