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grammar and writing tutorial lessons

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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

Unknown audiences

Sometimes you’ll be in a situation where you don’t really know whether your audience will be hostile or friendly. A safe way to go in this situation is to assume that your audience is hostile and write accordingly.

Another thing you can do when you write for an unknown audience is to make sure that the way you write is as respectful as possible - try to appear as unbiased as possible give equal coverage to all stances on the issue. That way, if you are writing for a hostile audience who disagrees with your opinion, by covering their opinion completely and fairly they’ll feel that you’ve given them a ‘fair go’. That will make them far more likely to also read the other opinions with an open mind, since they feel like they’ve been represented fairly.

Click here to move on to the next topic: What does the audience want