Write for Your Audience, Not against Them

What is an audience?

In technical writing, your audience is your intended reader: it's who you're writing for. Usually, your audience can be categorized into the following groups:

• Experts: These are the people who generate ideas about the project/product and may have even designed or tested it. They have a high level of technical knowledge.

• Technicians: These are the people who build and maintain the project/product. They also have a high level of technical knowledge, but it may be more practical and less theoretical than expert knowledge.

• Executives: These are people who fund projects/products and make decisions about them on a business or administrative level. Their technical knowledge level is usually lower than experts or technicians, and is often similar to the knowledge level of non-specialists.

• Non-specialists: These are typically the end-users of a product or the people curious about a project. They have the lowest technical knowledge level. Unless you are writing instruction manuals for the public, non-specialists are usually a secondary audience.