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WRITER’S CHECKLIST
Click each checklist item to read more about it.
Following is a checklist for analyzing your audience and purpose. Remember that your document might be read by one person, several people, a large group, or several groups with various needs.
Did you fill out an audience profile sheet for your primary and secondary audiences?
In analyzing your audience, did you consider the following questions about each of your most important readers:
What is your reader’s educational background?
What is your reader’s professional experience?
What is your reader’s job responsibility?
What are your reader’s personal characteristics?
What are your reader’s personal preferences?
What are your reader’s cultural characteristics?
Why will the reader read your document?
What is your reader’s attitude toward you?
What is your reader’s attitude toward the subject?
What are your reader’s expectations about the document?
How will your reader read your document?
What is your reader’s reading skill?
What is the physical environment in which your reader will read your document?
In learning about your readers, did you
determine what you already know about them?
read about your audience online?
search social media for documents your audience has written?
analyze social-media data, if available?
In planning to write for an audience from another culture, did you consider the following cultural variables:
In planning to write for an audience from another culture, did you consider other cultural variables:
focus on individuals or groups?
distance between business life and private life?
need for details to be spelled out?
In writing for a multicultural audience, did you
define abbreviations and acronyms in a glossary?
avoid jargon unless you knew that your readers were familiar with it?
use the active voice whenever possible?
have the document reviewed by someone from the reader’s culture?
In writing for multiple audiences, did you consider creating a modular document?
Did you state your purpose in writing and express it in the form of a verb or verbs?
Did you get management’s approval of your analysis of audience and purpose?