Plain Language Business Writing: “Analyzing Audience and Purpose”

Before worrying about wording (when writing business documents using the effective tenets of plain language), crawl out of your socks and think like your readers. You needn’t agree with them to write well, but you must see the business world from their perspective. Answer such questions as these:

• Who are your readers? Decide who needs to act on what you say (To line), who needs to know but not act (Cc line), and who needs a secret copy (Bcc line). Then, because forwarding is so easy, you’d better anticipate the business readers you haven’t named.

• What do your business readers know already (about writing using plain language), and what do they need to know now (again, about plain language business writing)? Don’t let your writing raise more questions than it answers.

• What interests your readers? If writing to persuade (and here again, business documents written in plain language are extremely effective) rather than just in-form, make at least one appeal to those interests.

• What are the obstacles? At least acknowledge them. Better, demolish them.

• What will make it easy for readers to understand or act (the business documents you have written)? To write well (certainly in plain language), you must want to help the other person.

Just as important as reading your readers is knowing your own purpose. What specific action do you want your business writing in plain language to produce? Judge everything you write by how well it furthers your purpose. Gauge how effective your business documents are when written in plain language.

Suppose you work in the human resources office. You may write a letter to a college student selling him on your internship program, an email to your supervisor telling her how the intern program is going, and an instruction to your replacement explaining how to get things done. In each case, you adjust for your audience and purpose. The more deliberate the adjustments, the more you are likely to make sound choices about what to say and how to say it.

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