Identifying the audience and purpose of your writing

In a nutshell

The audience of a text simply means the type of person or group of people that the author hoped would read their writing. When reading a text, it is useful to think about who the author might be speaking to with their writing. This makes it easier to see the purpose of a text, which is simply the author’s reason for writing the text in the first place.  

Identifying audience

The audience of a text can be any type of person or group of people that you think is being addressed by the author’s writing, or who the author expects to read their text. The writing might be particularly suited to an age group or to people from a particular place in the world. 

For instance, when writing your own text, think about a particular style or topic of your writing that stands out, and think of the kind of person that it might appeal to most. This tells you your audience. 

Example

If a story is written in short, simple sentences, and has lots of colourful pictures in it, then the audience of this text is probably going to be young children. The pictures would entertain the children and the simple writing would be easy for them to understand.

Identifying purpose

The audience of a text is very closely linked with the purpose of a text. The purpose is what the author is trying to achieve with the text and refers to any aims or goals they might have had when they wrote it. 

To identify the purpose of your writing, consider why you chose to write the text in the first place, or what you hope the text will achieve when people read it.  

Example

Some texts are not written purely for entertainment although that can also be a purpose of its own! For instance, leaflets are also types of text that have been written for a particular purpose and for a certain audience. Imagine a leaflet came through your letterbox with information about the negative effect of litter being left in the local park written on it.

Analysis

In this case, the purpose of the writing is not to entertain - instead, it is to tell people not to leave litter in the park, and to keep the area clean. It is also clear that the leaflet’s target audience is people that live near and go to this local park: if someone who had never been to the park read the leaflet, it might seem irrelevant to them.