4 Audience and purpose

It is important to be able to recognise that people write things for different reasons. For example, someone writing for a newspaper might be trying to entertain or inform people and encourage them to buy that newspaper. Someone writing a do-it-yourself manual will want to write as clearly and simply as possible so that people can easily follow the instructions.

If you can recognise what a piece of writing is trying to say and why, you can make quick decisions on how you are going to approach it. If a do-it-yourself manual, for example, has too much writing and no pictures, it is not likely to be of much use, so you can decide quickly to look for a better version.