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General Considerations
A Why We Write
We write primarily to communicate—what we question, what we believe, what
we know. We also write to discover what we think. Just as expression without
thought is empty, so thought is incomplete without expression. But commu-
nication is not the only end we try to realize when we write. We write to gain
power by defining reality as we see it; we write to signal our membership in a
community, to embrace some people and exclude others; we may sometimes
even write to obscure. We write to conform to verbal etiquette; we write to
define our identities by assuming a particular voice. At times we write to
amuse, to enjoy the play of language, and to share our delight in language with
others.
This booklet focuses on the primary goal of writing prose: clear communication. But at times it touches on these less overt social, political, even moral
purposes in writing. If you wish to become a good writer, you must be self-
conscious about these purposes as well.
B Audience
A basic consideration is audience—for whom are you writing? Readers of a
national magazine may need to be reminded that Freud was the founder of
psychoanalysis, but your teacher and fellow students in a course on Freud will
not. Usually it is best to write as if you were speaking to your classmates and
to omit background material that the class already knows. Assume that your
readers are intelligent enough to understand any argument you put before
them, but assume too that the audience must be given the essential evidence
for that argument.
Technical material raises particularly acute questions of audience. A discourse
on Talmudic law, a description of enzyme activity in the nerve cell, a proof of
convergence of a robot navigation algorithm—all refer to complex formal systems of thought. The same passage that appears opaque to one reader may
well strike another more versed in the system as obvious. A conscious choice is
unavoidable: you may be forced to exclude or irritate one group of readers in
your effort to inform your proper audience.