| Identifying your audience (your readers), then writing | | | | explains this well: |
| with that audience in mind, is the single most important | | | | "People are not blank slates on which we write our |
| aspect of good business writing, as it is with any other | | | | messages. People are a pulsating bundle of attitudes, |
| form of writing. If the audience is ignored, your | | | | values, prejudices, experience, feelings, thoughts, |
| message will fail, no matter how well you have crafted | | | | sensations and aspirations. They are active, not |
| your words. | | | | passive, even when they are listening. Is it any wonder |
| You're not likely to write about fishing tackle in a | | | | that, unless we make sure the relevance of our |
| woman's magazine, or swimwear in a horse magazine, | | | | message is obvious to the audience, there is every |
| or cooking techniques in a motor-racing magazine, | | | | chance they won't really listen at all (even if they are |
| right? Subscribers to Street Machine do not pay good | | | | nodding and grunting encouragingly) or that, if they do, |
| money to learn about blueberry muffins. | | | | their own concerns might still get in the way?" |
| In fact, your audience is more important than your | | | | Hugh Mackay, Why don't people listen? Pan Macmillan |
| message. | | | | 1994 |
| You have only one opportunity to craft your message: | | | | The audience is more important than the message. |
| once it is in the hands of your 'audience', it is out of | | | | It comes as a surprise, then, that so few writers bother |
| your control. What each reader does with your writing | | | | to think about who will read what they write. During the |
| is then up to them, not you. Whether or not they read | | | | years that I have been writing and editing |
| it, whether they put it down before they finish it, | | | | professionally, I have seen all kinds of business writing |
| whether they understand it, how they interpret it, and | | | | that fails to respect - or, often, even to consider - its |
| how they respond to it, is all up to the reader, not you. | | | | audience. |
| Social and communications writer Hugh Mackay | | | | |