FIT2043 Lecture 4: FIT2043 Lecture 4 Audience & Purpose Notes
13 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
L4 - Audience & Purpose
Purpose
● Know what you are doing before your start - PLAN
● Make the purpose obvious to the reader
● Understand what your reader wants to get out of your documentation
Audience
● Who will be reading your technical documents?
○ Management
■ Can be our client’s contact person
■ Wants to know how well you’re progressing
■ Could be technically-oriented
○ Clients
■ Are paying
■ Interested in how well the project is going
■ Often not up to date about technologies
○ Users of the software
■ Could be anybody
■ Want to be able to use your product
■ Don’t always need to understand how it works
○ Other developers
● Different users will require different technical vocab, formality and how complex you
make the document.
● Demographics
○ How old are your readers?
■ Impacts the familiarity with your example
■ Are they able to understand complex sentences?
○ Is gender going to be an issue?
■ Don’t assume male readers/demographics
○ Is cultural difference going to impact the writing?
■ Content
■ Different cultural standards and respect
● When writing, take into account the following:
○ Audience’s Level of Education
○ Audience’s Technical Vocabulary
○ Audience’s Cultural & Linguistic Background
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Know what you are doing before your start - plan. Make the purpose obvious to the reader. Understand what your reader wants to get out of your documentation. Wants to know how well you"re progressing. Interested in how well the project is going. Often not up to date about technologies. Want to be able to use your product. Don"t always need to understand how it works. Different users will require different technical vocab, formality and how complex you make the document. When writing, take into account the following:
