Determining these characteristics will help guide your document creation
Knowing the audience characteristics helps writers decide how to present information clearly.
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- Jan 2026
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Audience analysis can become complicated when you consider that you may have a combination of audience types and backgrounds: mixed audience types, wide variability within audience, and/or unknown audiences.
This explains why writing can be sometimes challenging when there are different audiences. Each readers have different backgrounds, which makes it important to be clear when presenting information.
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A key concern of technical communication is the receiver of the information—the audience. Technical communication is the delivery of technical information to readers (or listeners or viewers) in a manner that is adapted to their needs, level of understanding, and background.
Writers have to adjust their explanations based on the reader's level of understanding.
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There are several types of audiences, including experts, technicians, executives, gatekeepers, and non-specialists (laypeople). However, most documents you create will have multiple audiences: often, a primary audience—the main audience for the document—and a secondary audience—other audiences that are likely to read the document, but who are not the main focus.
This shows that there are different types of audiences. Most writing are not just for a specific audience, so, knowing the primary and secondary audience helps decide the wordings and the tone.
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