Your audience determines your word choice, grammar, even general language; its a vital part of communication, and as I have already talked about in my post Clarity, communication is a key component to being human.

Not only is knowing your audience important to ensure understanding, but your audience keeps you in business. As a professional and technical, being able to adapt to varying audiences is an important skill to obtain work, whereas an author markets to the audience of a genre, young adults or housewives. In either, the audience sustains each person’s career.

Knowing your audience is a necessity in order to be a successful writer.

I was #1 on my high school golf team, and we were at the two-day regional tournament in Williamsburg, Virginia. Our team had a very slim chance of making it to the state championship because two schools were stacked with insurmountable talent– most of their top golfers receive scholarships to Division I colleges. During the first day, I was in a group of both #1 players from each of these teams. It was probably the most intimidating experience of my life so far.

We were on the back nine, about to finish the day, when one of the top players hit into a hazard. As he is searching on a nearly 90 degree slope full of thick grass alone, he had a perfect opportunity to lie about finding his ball– one of our group members even found a ball of the same make as his. He could have easily avoided a penalty from loosing his ball; no one was paying attention, and he was in high contention with another player in our group to medal for the day (finishing with the lowest score). Yet, he looked at the ball and claimed that it was not his, suffering the possible defeat.

My group was not chatty or inviting (not that competition should be); I did not make any life-long friends that day, but I observed an act that expressed courage and strength. An act that I am reminded of every time I am faced with a choice of right and wrong, no matter how small and even when no one is around to notice. Whether it is volunteering and not telling anyone about it to make myself feel better or simply picking up trash after a football game, this golfer’s ethical act has stuck with me for 4 years, and I expect it to stay with me for the rest of my life.

Clarity is important. Being able to say what you want and have your audience understand exactly what you mean to say, is an invaluable ability. Therefore, clarity is my duty as a Professional and Technical Writer. I ensure that an authors intentions are perceived correctly by the audience. Whether it is correcting punctuation, spelling, or grammar, my job is to make a writer’s work understandable and readable. There is no room for error because without clarity, words have no meaning.