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Objective versus subjective writing

Completely objective

Dont use the first person

Write from a general persons perspective

Superficially objective

Presentation order

Subjective writing

Think about your audience

Two types of audience

Audience knowledge

Laypeople

Getting the message across to laypeople

Analogies

Managers

Experts

Hostile or friendly

Unknown audiences

What does the audience want

Laypeople

Laypeople (used to be ‘laymen’) have no real knowledge about the specific topic you’re writing about. They probably don’t understand any of the technical details of what you’re writing about. This means that you have to be careful when describing things, as they might not have the background knowledge to understand your explanations, points, and arguments. For instance, while most people have some general knowledge about computers, a sentence like this is probably unsuitable for the average layperson:

The Radeon 9700 Pro achieved a score of 4500 when benchmarked using 3DMark 2001 SE.

Even an intelligent layperson would probably ask the following questions after reading this sentence:

• What is a ‘Radeon 9700 Pro’?

• What is ‘3DMark 2001 SE’?

• What is the significance of a score of 4500?

When writing for a layperson, you can assume a minimal level of knowledge, but then meed to explain everything else. If explaining is going to take too much room, at the very least refer the reader to where they can get further information. This would be a much more suitable version of this sentence for a layperson:

The Radeon 9700 Pro is a graphics card that was first sold in 2003. It achieved a score of 4500 when benchmarked using 3DMark 2001 SE, which made it one of the best graphics cards available at the time. 3DMark 2001 SE is a software program that is used to evaluate the performance of computer graphics cards.

So obviously, because you’ve to explain some stuff, the sentence becomes longer. If the intended audience for this piece of writing had had even less knowledge about computers, rather than letting your essay blow out to huge proportions from all the explaining, you’d be better off referring the reader elsewhere for the explanations.

Readers unfamiliar with computer graphics cards are encouraged to refer to the excellent reference by Mark Walden, which can be found on this website. The Radeon 9700 Pro achieved a score of 4500 when benchmarked using 3DMark 2001 SE.

Click here to move on to the next topic: Getting the message across to laypeople