The Basic Elements of Writing and Generating Ideas: Audience

The Basic Elements of Writing and Generating Ideas

This lesson presents detailed explantion of the basic elements of writing, and how to generate and outline ideas.

2. Basic elements of writing

2.3. Audience

Since you are writing for college courses, you already know that professors do not all

have the same requirements for their assignments. A biology professor may want a different style of writing than a history professor does.

There is an old saying from the military that “terrain determines tactics,” and this adage proves true with writing. If you think of each person or group of people you are writing

to (your audience) as having certain characteristics—values, attitudes, intelligence, and biases—this will take you a long way toward using the right “tactics” to get a good grade,

earn a promotion at your job, or influence your community about a certain issue.