Informal and formal audiences.

Informal and formal audiences. For some informal writing, you know exactly who your audience is, and communicating appropriately may be a simple matter. It’s still worth remembering that when you post in a public space, you may not be aware of how large and varied your online audience can be. Can your friend’s parents, or her prospective employer, see your posts on her Facebook page? (The answer depends partly on her privacy settings.) Who’s reading the blogs you comment on?

Even if you write with intuitive ease in tweets and texts to friends, you may struggle when asked to write for an instructor or for a “general audience.” You may wonder, for example, what a general audience might know about your topic, what they value, or what evidence they will find persuasive. When you are new to academic writing, making assumptions about such questions can be tricky. If you can identify samples of writing that appeal to a similar audience, look for clues about what that audience expects; if still in doubt, check with your instructor or drop by your campus writing center.