how to write an audience analysis essay

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Audience Analysis Overview

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In order to compose persuasive, user-centered communication, you should gather as much information as possible about the people reading your document. Your audience may consist of people who may have differing needs and expectations. In other words, you may have a complex audience in all the stages of your document's lifecycle—the development stage, the reading stage, and the action stage.

Development stage

• Primary author (you)
• Secondary author (a technical expert within your organization)
• Secondary author (a budget expert within your organization)
• Gatekeeper (your supervisor)

Reading stage

• Primary audience (decision maker, primary point of contact, project lead, etc.)
• Secondary audience (technical expert within audience's organization)
• Shadow audience (others who may read your communication)

Action stage

• Stakeholders (people who may read your communication, but more importantly, those who will be affected by the decisions based on the information you provide)

Keep in mind that documents may not go through a clear, three-step process. Instead, the lifecycle of your communication may consist of overlapping stages of evolution. User-centered writing calls for close cooperation between those who are composing the documents, those who will read and act upon the documents, and those who will be affected by the actions.

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Targeting Your Audience

Isn’t your audience your professor? Many students assume that the instructor is the primary audience for their writing. While this is true, your assignment could call for you to write for different audiences—even hypothetical ones, such as professionals in your field of study or classmates. Sometimes it will be clear who your audience is going to be in your assignment instructions, and other times, investigating further will be necessary.  Click on the tabs below for more information.

• IMPLEMENTATION

Why is it important to know your audience?

Audience analysis  is crucial to understanding what should go into each piece of writing. Knowing your audience guides you on how to structure your essay, what kind of language and tone to use, what sort of information to use, and how to progress into each topic. 

While the tone you use in academic writing will be different than when giving a speech, we tend to adjust our message according to who is listening during both. You would not cover learning theories developed by psychologists with a group of kindergarteners, just as you would not write about the health benefits of grass-fed beef to an audience of vegetarians.

Inquiring About Your Audience

To develop an  audience profile , you need specific information about your audience—information about its understanding of and attitude toward your subject. When in doubt, always ask your professor, but below are some questions you can ask to probe further:

Who is my primary audience? 

What purpose will this writing serve for my readers? How will they use it?

Is my audience multicultural? 

What is my audience’s attitude toward and probable reaction to this writing?

Will readers expect certain patterns of thought in my writing? Will they need statistical data to be convinced? 

Implementation of Gathered Information

Once you have determined the answer to the questions on the previous tab, it is easier to plan content decisions:

how much information to convey

what kinds and levels of details to include 

what concepts to emphasize

how much time to spend on research 

what writing strategies to use

how to organize your information 

what words, tone, and style to use to communicate with your audience

Key Takeaways

• Determining how to frame your writing according to the readers is a courtesy to them and you as a writer.
• Knowing your audience guides you on how to structure your essay, what kind of language and tone to use, what sort of information to use, and how to progress into each topic. 

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Table of Contents: Online Guide to Writing

Chapter 1: College Writing

How Does College Writing Differ from Workplace Writing?

What Is College Writing?

Why So Much Emphasis on Writing?

Chapter 2: The Writing Process

Doing Exploratory Research

Getting from Notes to Your Draft

Introduction

Prewriting - Techniques to Get Started - Mining Your Intuition

Prewriting: Targeting Your Audience

Prewriting: Techniques to Get Started

Prewriting: Understanding Your Assignment

Rewriting: Being Your Own Critic

Rewriting: Creating a Revision Strategy

Rewriting: Getting Feedback

Rewriting: The Final Draft

Techniques to Get Started - Outlining

Techniques to Get Started - Using Systematic Techniques

Thesis Statement and Controlling Idea

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Freewriting

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Summarizing Your Ideas

Writing: Outlining What You Will Write

Chapter 3: Thinking Strategies

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone: Style Through Vocabulary and Diction

Critical Strategies and Writing

Critical Strategies and Writing: Analysis

Critical Strategies and Writing: Evaluation

Critical Strategies and Writing: Persuasion

Critical Strategies and Writing: Synthesis

Developing a Paper Using Strategies

Kinds of Assignments You Will Write

Patterns for Presenting Information

Patterns for Presenting Information: Critiques

Patterns for Presenting Information: Discussing Raw Data

Patterns for Presenting Information: General-to-Specific Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Problem-Cause-Solution Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Specific-to-General Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Summaries and Abstracts

Supporting with Research and Examples

Writing Essay Examinations

Writing Essay Examinations: Make Your Answer Relevant and Complete

Writing Essay Examinations: Organize Thinking Before Writing

Writing Essay Examinations: Read and Understand the Question

Chapter 4: The Research Process

Planning and Writing a Research Paper

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Ask a Research Question

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Cite Sources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Collect Evidence

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Decide Your Point of View, or Role, for Your Research

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Draw Conclusions

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Find a Topic and Get an Overview

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Manage Your Resources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Outline

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Survey the Literature

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Work Your Sources into Your Research Writing

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Human Resources

Research Resources: What Are Research Resources?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Electronic Resources

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Print Resources

Structuring the Research Paper: Formal Research Structure

Structuring the Research Paper: Informal Research Structure

The Nature of Research

The Research Assignment: How Should Research Sources Be Evaluated?

The Research Assignment: When Is Research Needed?

The Research Assignment: Why Perform Research?

Chapter 5: Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity

Giving Credit to Sources

Giving Credit to Sources: Copyright Laws

Giving Credit to Sources: Documentation

Giving Credit to Sources: Style Guides

Integrating Sources

Practicing Academic Integrity

Practicing Academic Integrity: Keeping Accurate Records

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Paraphrasing Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Quoting Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Summarizing Your Sources

Types of Documentation

Types of Documentation: Bibliographies and Source Lists

Types of Documentation: Citing World Wide Web Sources

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - APA Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - CSE/CBE Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - Chicago Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - MLA Style

Types of Documentation: Note Citations

Chapter 6: Using Library Resources

Finding Library Resources

Chapter 7: Assessing Your Writing

How Is Writing Graded?

How Is Writing Graded?: A General Assessment Tool

The Draft Stage

The Draft Stage: The First Draft

The Draft Stage: The Revision Process and the Final Draft

The Draft Stage: Using Feedback

The Research Stage

Using Assessment to Improve Your Writing

Chapter 8: Other Frequently Assigned Papers

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Article and Book Reviews

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Reaction Papers

Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Adapting the Argument Structure

Writing Arguments: Purposes of Argument

Writing Arguments: References to Consult for Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Anticipate Active Opposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Determine Your Organization

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Develop Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Introduce Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - State Your Thesis or Proposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Write Your Conclusion

Writing Arguments: Types of Argument

Appendix A: Books to Help Improve Your Writing

Dictionaries

General Style Manuals

Researching on the Internet

Special Style Manuals

Writing Handbooks

Appendix B: Collaborative Writing and Peer Reviewing

Collaborative Writing: Assignments to Accompany the Group Project

Collaborative Writing: Informal Progress Report

Collaborative Writing: Issues to Resolve

Collaborative Writing: Methodology

Collaborative Writing: Peer Evaluation

Collaborative Writing: Tasks of Collaborative Writing Group Members

Collaborative Writing: Writing Plan

General Introduction

Peer Reviewing

Appendix C: Developing an Improvement Plan

Working with Your Instructor’s Comments and Grades

Appendix D: Writing Plan and Project Schedule

Devising a Writing Project Plan and Schedule

Reviewing Your Plan with Others

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What this handout is about

This handout will help you understand and write for the appropriate audience when you write an academic essay.

Audience matters

When you’re in the process of writing a paper, it’s easy to forget that you are actually writing to someone. Whether you’ve thought about it consciously or not, you always write to an audience: sometimes your audience is a very generalized group of readers, sometimes you know the individuals who compose the audience, and sometimes you write for yourself. Keeping your audience in mind while you write can help you make good decisions about what material to include, how to organize your ideas, and how best to support your argument.

To illustrate the impact of audience, imagine you’re writing a letter to your grandmother to tell her about your first month of college. What details and stories might you include? What might you leave out? Now imagine that you’re writing on the same topic but your audience is your best friend. Unless you have an extremely cool grandma to whom you’re very close, it’s likely that your two letters would look quite different in terms of content, structure, and even tone.

Isn’t my instructor my audience?

Yes, your instructor or TA is probably the actual audience for your paper. Your instructors read and grade your essays, and you want to keep their needs and perspectives in mind when you write. However, when you write an essay with only your instructor in mind, you might not say as much as you should or say it as clearly as you should, because you assume that the person grading it knows more than you do and will fill in the gaps. This leaves it up to the instructor to decide what you are really saying, and they might decide differently than you expect. For example, they might decide that those gaps show that you don’t know and understand the material. Remember that time when you said to yourself, “I don’t have to explain communism; my instructor knows more about that than I do” and got back a paper that said something like “Shows no understanding of communism”? That’s an example of what can go awry when you think of your instructor as your only audience.

Thinking about your audience differently can improve your writing, especially in terms of how clearly you express your argument. The clearer your points are, the more likely you are to have a strong essay. Your instructor will say, “They really understands communism—they’re able to explain it simply and clearly!” By treating your instructor as an intelligent but uninformed audience, you end up addressing her more effectively.

How do I identify my audience and what they want from me?

Before you even begin the process of writing, take some time to consider who your audience is and what they want from you. Use the following questions to help you identify your audience and what you can do to address their wants and needs:

• Who is your audience?
• Might you have more than one audience? If so, how many audiences do you have? List them.
• Does your assignment itself give any clues about your audience?
• What does your audience need? What do they want? What do they value?
• What is most important to them?
• What are they least likely to care about?
• What kind of organization would best help your audience understand and appreciate your argument?
• What do you have to say (or what are you doing in your research) that might surprise your audience?
• What do you want your audience to think, learn, or assume about you? What impression do you want your writing or your research to convey?

How much should I explain?

This is the hard part. As we said earlier, you want to show your instructor that you know the material. But different assignments call for varying degrees of information. Different fields also have different expectations. For more about what each field tends to expect from an essay, see the Writing Center handouts on writing in specific fields of study. The best place to start figuring out how much you should say about each part of your paper is in a careful reading of the assignment. We give you some tips for reading assignments and figuring them out in our handout on how to read an assignment . The assignment may specify an audience for your paper; sometimes the instructor will ask you to imagine that you are writing to your congressperson, for a professional journal, to a group of specialists in a particular field, or for a group of your peers. If the assignment doesn’t specify an audience, you may find it most useful to imagine your classmates reading the paper, rather than your instructor.

Now, knowing your imaginary audience, what other clues can you get from the assignment? If the assignment asks you to summarize something that you have read, then your reader wants you to include more examples from the text than if the assignment asks you to interpret the passage. Most assignments in college focus on argument rather than the repetition of learned information, so your reader probably doesn’t want a lengthy, detailed, point-by-point summary of your reading (book reports in some classes and argument reconstructions in philosophy classes are big exceptions to this rule). If your assignment asks you to interpret or analyze the text (or an event or idea), then you want to make sure that your explanation of the material is focused and not so detailed that you end up spending more time on examples than on your analysis. If you are not sure about the difference between explaining something and analyzing it, see our handouts on reading the assignment and argument .

Once you have a draft, try your level of explanation out on a friend, a classmate, or a Writing Center coach. Get the person to read your rough draft, and then ask them to talk to you about what they did and didn’t understand. (Now is not the time to talk about proofreading stuff, so make sure they ignore those issues for the time being). You will likely get one of the following responses or a combination of them:

• If your listener/reader has tons of questions about what you are saying, then you probably need to explain more. Let’s say you are writing a paper on piranhas, and your reader says, “What’s a piranha? Why do I need to know about them? How would I identify one?” Those are vital questions that you clearly need to answer in your paper. You need more detail and elaboration.
• If your reader seems confused, you probably need to explain more clearly. So if they say, “Are there piranhas in the lakes around here?” you may not need to give more examples, but rather focus on making sure your examples and points are clear.
• If your reader looks bored and can repeat back to you more details than they need to know to get your point, you probably explained too much. Excessive detail can also be confusing, because it can bog the reader down and keep them from focusing on your main points. You want your reader to say, “So it seems like your paper is saying that piranhas are misunderstood creatures that are essential to South American ecosystems,” not, “Uh…piranhas are important?” or, “Well, I know you said piranhas don’t usually attack people, and they’re usually around 10 inches long, and some people keep them in aquariums as pets, and dolphins are one of their predators, and…a bunch of other stuff, I guess?”

Sometimes it’s not the amount of explanation that matters, but the word choice and tone you adopt. Your word choice and tone need to match your audience’s expectations. For example, imagine you are researching piranhas; you find an article in National Geographic and another one in an academic journal for scientists. How would you expect the two articles to sound? National Geographic is written for a popular audience; you might expect it to have sentences like “The piranha generally lives in shallow rivers and streams in South America.” The scientific journal, on the other hand, might use much more technical language, because it’s written for an audience of specialists. A sentence like “Serrasalmus piraya lives in fresh and brackish intercoastal and proto-arboreal sub-tropical regions between the 45th and 38th parallels” might not be out of place in the journal.

Generally, you want your reader to know enough material to understand the points you are making. It’s like the old forest/trees metaphor. If you give the reader nothing but trees, they won’t see the forest (your thesis, the reason for your paper). If you give them a big forest and no trees, they won’t know how you got to the forest (they might say, “Your point is fine, but you haven’t proven it to me”). You want the reader to say, “Nice forest, and those trees really help me to see it.” Our handout on paragraph development can help you find a good balance of examples and explanation.

Reading your own drafts

Writers tend to read over their own papers pretty quickly, with the knowledge of what they are trying to argue already in their minds. Reading in this way can cause you to skip over gaps in your written argument because the gap-filler is in your head. A problem occurs when your reader falls into these gaps. Your reader wants you to make the necessary connections from one thought or sentence to the next. When you don’t, the reader can become confused or frustrated. Think about when you read something and you struggle to find the most important points or what the writer is trying to say. Isn’t that annoying? Doesn’t it make you want to quit reading and surf the web or call a friend?

Putting yourself in the reader’s position

Instead of reading your draft as if you wrote it and know what you meant, try reading it as if you have no previous knowledge of the material. Have you explained enough? Are the connections clear? This can be hard to do at first. Consider using one of the following strategies:

• Take a break from your work—go work out, take a nap, take a day off. This is why the Writing Center and your instructors encourage you to start writing more than a day before the paper is due. If you write the paper the night before it’s due, you make it almost impossible to read the paper with a fresh eye.
• Try outlining after writing—after you have a draft, look at each paragraph separately. Write down the main point for each paragraph on a separate sheet of paper, in the order you have put them. Then look at your “outline”—does it reflect what you meant to say, in a logical order? Are some paragraphs hard to reduce to one point? Why? This technique will help you find places where you may have confused your reader by straying from your original plan for the paper.
• Read the paper aloud—we do this all the time at the Writing Center, and once you get used to it, you’ll see that it helps you slow down and really consider how your reader experiences your text. It will also help you catch a lot of sentence-level errors, such as misspellings and missing words, which can make it difficult for your reader to focus on your argument.

These techniques can help you read your paper in the same way your reader will and make revisions that help your reader understand your argument. Then, when your instructor finally reads your finished draft, they won’t have to fill in any gaps. The more work you do, the less work your audience will have to do—and the more likely it is that your instructor will follow and understand your argument.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Adapting to Your Audience

When we talk to someone face-to-face, we know just who we are talking to. We automatically adjust our speech to be sure we are communicating our message. Many writers don't make those same adjustments when they write to different audiences, usually because they don't take the time to think about who will be reading what they write. To be sure that we communicate clearly in writing, we need to adjust our message--how we say to and what information we include--by recognizing that different readers can best understand different messages.

Audience Definition

An audience is a group of readers who reads a particular piece of writing. As a writer, you should anticipate the needs or expectations of your audience in order to convey information or argue for a particular claim. Your audience might be your instructor, classmates, the president of an organization, the staff of a management company, or any other number of possibilities. You need to know your audience before you start writing.

Types of Audiences

Audiences come in all shapes and sizes. They may be a group of similar people or combinations of different groups of people. You'll need to determine who they are in order to analyze your audience. This guide divides audience into two categories: academic and nonacademic. Note: Your audience can be a combination of the two.

Determining your Audience Type

Writers determine their audience types by considering:

• Who they are (age, sex, education, economic status, political/social/religious beliefs);
• What Level of Information they have about the subject (novice, general reader, specialist or expert);
• The Context in which they will be reading a piece of writing (in a newspaper, textbook, popular magazine, specialized journal, on the Internet, and so forth).

You'll need to analyze your audience in order to write effectively.

Three Categories of Audience

Michel Muraski, Journalism and Technical Communication Department Three categories of audience are the "lay" audience, the "managerial" audience, and the "experts." The "lay" audience has no special or expert knowledge. They connect with the human interest aspect of articles. They usually need background information; they expect more definition and description; and they may want attractive graphics or visuals. The "managerial audience may or may not have more knowledge than the lay audience about the subject, but they need knowledge so they can make a decision about the issue. Any background information, facts, or statistics needed to make a decision should be highlighted. The "experts" may be the most demanding audience in terms of knowledge, presentation, and graphics or visuals. Experts are often "theorists" or "practitioners." For the "expert" audience, document formats are often elaborate and technical, style and vocabulary may be specialized or technical, source citations are reliable and up-to-date, and documentation is accurate.

Academic Audiences

Assuming you are writing a paper for a class, ask yourself who is the reader? The most important reader is probably the instructor, even if a grader will look at the paper first. Ask yourself what you know about your teacher and his or her approach to the discipline. Do you know, for example, if this teacher always expects papers to be carefully argued? Has this teacher emphasized the importance of summarizing cases accurately before referring to them? Will this professor be looking for an "argument synthesis," showing how the cases all support one point or will this prof be more interested in seeing how the cases complicate one another? In other words, take the time to brainstorm about what you've learned about the teacher to help you meet his or her expectations for this paper. You probably know more about the teacher than you think, and asking questions about how the teacher treats this material in class will help you remember those details to help you shape your paper.

Related Information: Academic Audience Example

Psychology 100 - Your paper should be about 6 pages. The My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1969 was a particularly egregious case of overobedience to military authority in wartime. Show the connection between this event and Milgram's experiments. [Milgram used his authority as a researcher to convince subjects to administer what they thought were painful, even life-threatening, shocks to uncooperative people.] Note that Milgram himself treated the My Lai massacre in the epilogue to his Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974). (Behrens and Rosen, 384-5).

Nonacademic Audiences

Nonacademic audiences read your writing for reasons other than to grade you. (Some teachers assign papers specifically asking students to write for nonacademic audiences). They will gain information from your writing. Think about writing a newsletter or a resume: audiences read these for information, only how they use the information varies. A nonacademic audience involves more than writing. Consider the following:

• You'll have to determine who the audience is.
• You'll have to think about what is an appropriate format to use.
• You'll have to consider what is and is not an appropriate topic for your audience. (If you don't have one already.)
• You'll have to determine how your topic will fit the format.

Related Information: Nonacademic Audience Example

History 342 - Discovering and Colonizing New Worlds Imagine that you are an administrator for the school district. In light of the Columbus controversy, you have been assigned to draft a set of guidelines for teaching about Columbus in the district's elementary and junior high schools. These guidelines will explain official policy to parents and teachers in teaching children about Columbus and the significance of his voyages. They will also draw on arguments made on both sides of the controversy, as well as on historical facts on which both sides agree. Draft these guidelines. Suggested format: a prefatory section giving the rationale for the guidelines and a set of purposes governing the new policies, followed by the guidelines themselves with an explanation of each one (specifically citing sources). A conclusion is optional. (Behrens and Rosen, 314)

Audience Invoked versus Audience Addressed

Donna Lecourt, English Department An audience addressed versus an audience invoked is basically your real audience versus the reader you create through your text and introduction. In a way, you tell the reader who you want them to be. In a conference paper I'm writing, I start off by assuming that we're (the reader and myself) sharing some presumptions. By saying that, I'm almost telling the reader who I want them to be. I'm creating an audience position, that "Yes, there exists some reality." But I'm also trying to create it for people who are going to approach this and say, "Okay there are things I think we all hold in common. I don't say that in my text, but my text invokes it. The other audience, the real audience, are those who will be at the conference. Who's at the conference and who reads the journal are not always the same.

Teacher as Audience

Kate Kiefer, English Department For most academic papers, the teacher is the explicit audience. But even within the same discipline, professors might expect quite different formats for papers. For example, in sociology, one prof might ask you to write mainly about your own experiences and your reactions to your experience. Another professor might want you to do library or field research about a social problem and never refer to your own experiences or attitudes toward that problem. Teachers will often try to give students more experience with writing to different audiences by targeting particular readers for a given paper. Then students address the target audience (class members, members of a business community, congressional representatives, and so on), including the teacher as a secondary audience.

Steve Reid, English Department When asked who their audience is, many students say, "It's my teacher." I think it's useful for students to widen their sense of audience in order to realize that their specific teacher is, in fact, a representative reader from a particular academic field or discourse community. Their teacher may be a composition teacher, an English literature teacher, a historian, a chemist, a psychologist, or a biologist--and they want and expect writing that is appropriate for their field. In terms of their expectations about effective writing, each of these teachers "wants' something slightly different, and those differences reflect the expectations of different academic areas. A composition teacher may want an introduction that gradually leads into the topic; a journalist may want an article that begins immediately with the most startling fact or event; a chemist may want to begin with a review of the research. Psychologists, literature professors, and historians may or may not want you to use your own personal experience, depending on the level (informal to formal) of the writing. Not all academic writing has the same requirements, and those requirements are not so much personal whims (Professor Jones hates it when I use first-person or "I"!) as they are the expectations of that particular academic discourse. So when you are writing an essay, imagine writing not just for your teacher, but for your teacher as a representative of a larger group of readers who belong to that particular academic area. That awareness may help you see that the requirements of that assignment are not just strange or quirky, but make some sense in the larger context of that particular academic discourse.

Developing Audience Awareness

When we talk to someone face-to-face, we always know just who we're talking to. We automatically adjust our speech to be sure we communicate our message. For instance, when we talk to three-year olds, we shorten sentences and use simpler words. When we talk to college professors, we use longer sentences and more formal language.

In short, we change what we say because we know our audience .

Interestingly, many writers don’t make the same adjustments when they write to different audiences, usually because they don’t take the time to think about who will be reading what they write. But to be sure that we communicate clearly in writing, we need to adjust our message--how we say it and what information we include--by recognizing that different readers can best understand different messages.

Defining Audience Awareness

As a concept, it sounds so simple: Think about who will read your paper before and while you write, and adjust your paper to help your reader understand it.

Compared to the theory of relativity, this concept is a piece of cake.

So why would teachers of writing spend so much time and energy talking about this simple idea? It turns out that writing (or revising) for a particular audience is much harder than thinking about it in the abstract.

Audience Awareness and Purpose

Let’s say you’ve just had a terrible experience with Parking Management and decide to write a letter to The Collegian to complain about this campus service. As you think about writing your letter to The Collegian , you’ll need to think not only about audience but also about why you are writing to those readers. Do you want simply to tell your story? Do you want to argue directly for a change in policy? Do you want to raise fellow students’ consciousness about a problem so that the student senate will eventually take up the issue? Depending on your goal, you might write a narrative, an argument, or a causal analysis. Which approach is most likely to be effective with your readers?

Writers need to consider both audience and purpose in writing because the two elements affect the paper so significantly, and decisions about one will affect the other.

Editing and Audience Awareness

Most writers complete their task and audience analysis before they begin writing, but it’s important to review what you know about both the specific task and readers’ expectations while you draft and revise the paper. Reviewing audience concerns as a separate step in your revising process is an especially good way to be sure you’re shaping your paper to best fit your readers’ needs.

Assumptions about Audience

Don Zimmerman, Journalism and Technical Communication Department The assumption often made in scientific and technical circles is if you're a biology prof and there's another biology prof who's working on a particular area, he may well be using a lot of unique terms the other one may not understand. A real problem in organizations is that the person who develops the product, the communication end of things, assumes a lot more than another person really understands.The question becomes, really, what level of understanding does a target audience have? The content area is a slippery thing for students to sometimes get a handle on. They just assume everybody in their discipline knows the terms. The question is if you've got a manager up here, is he familiar enough with your technical terms? I see technical terms as different than jargon terms. The technical things, really, are often the points communicating the idea fairly succinctly and to the point with the population that's used to dealing with those. As you move up in the management organization, they may or may not know what's going on. When we talk about things from the communications standpoint, we use a term called "frame of reference." I've learned there are many different terms like that in other fields. A body of literature called "reference base" is essentially the same thing. It's what the person reading or seeing the message brings to their setting. It's their total life experience framing how they interpret the message.

Analyzing an Audience

Analyzing your audience is essential. You need to investigate exactly who will read what you are going to write. For example, you might investigate who reads the journal articles or trade magazines in your field of study. Check out some of those magazines or journals and browse through several issues. In addition, you might interview people who will be your readers.

Remember: Analyze your audience BEFORE you start writing, so you'll know what format, style, vocabulary, or level or information is expected.

Writers in the advertising business spend a great deal of time researching their targeted audiences. Once they know who their audience is, they can mold their advertising--their words, format, graphics, images--to appeal to that specific audience.

You can determine the characteristics about your target audience through a demographic profile, or by investigating information or assumptions about your particular audience.

Audience Analysis: Formal verses Informal

Don Zimmerman, Journalism and Technical Communication Department One way to analyze an audience is what I call "informal" in its analysis techniques. The other way is a more "formal," structured approach that is not used a lot. With the informal way, a whole series of things usually happens. As a professional works in the field, they grow an intuitive sense about what their target audiences are. In other words, it's like an engineer. They go to a conference, they read the journals, they start to know how to write for people or how to communicate about them or how to target that, without really doing it. In other words, it's life experiences with particular people that will give them that. Other ways are by essentially reading and going through the publications they read. In other words, trade magazines. Some civil engineering news magazines are targeted for the practitioner in civil engineering. Those will give you a pretty good insight as to what's going on. A series of specialized civil engineering magazines deal with different aspects like earth moving news. There's a whole series of publications from the Institute of Concrete Development. Each of those are slightly different in what they want. Some of them are strong research journals and others are targeted to the day-to-day person who's operating in the field. Writers can talk to other people in a company and say, "I'm doing this report for John Smith or Sally." How do they see the world on this? Especially a new person. Most organizations do pretty heavy copy edit in lots of cases. Part of it is, there's a corporate culture often about how you do things and how you say things that may or may not be articulated very well to a new person. The more "formal" analysis techniques I like are things like writing focus groups and group techniques and surveys. One of the questions becomes, "What kinds of information do you need about the audience?" For me, in some ways, it's pretty simple. That is, "What is the primary purpose of this information?" "Is this information to inform them?" "Will that target audience be making a decision on that information?"

Analyzing Academic Audiences

Even within the same discipline, professors might expect quite different formats for papers. For example, in sociology, one prof might ask you to write mainly about your own experiences and your reactions to your experience. Another professor might want you to do library or field research about a social problem and never refer to your own experiences or attitudes toward that problem.

In other words, college writing assignments--even if your teacher is your only reader-- require careful audience analysis.

Let’s assume for the moment that you are writing a paper for a class. Who is the reader? The most important reader is the professor, even if the prof has a grader who will look at the paper first. Sometimes the assignment will ask you to write to some reader other than the prof, and we’ll take up those audiences after we look in more detail at how you can analyze teachers as the primary audience for papers.

So what kinds of questions can you ask to help you understand your professor as your main reader?

• Look carefully at the assignment sheet. Does it tell you anything about your teacher’s expectations?

Do you have any models of papers like this written for this prof in the past?

• Ask questions. What more can you learn about the professor’s expectations as a reader by asking directly?

Ask yourself what you know about the professor and about the discipline.

Related Information: Example Academic Audience Analysis: PSY100

Your paper should be about 6 pages. The My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1969 was a particularly egregious case of overobedience to military authority in wartime. Show the connection between this event and Milgram's experiments. [Milgram used his authority as a researcher to convince subjects to administer what they thought were painful, even life-threatening, shocks to uncooperative people.] Note that Milgram himself treated the My Lai massacre in the epilogue to his Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974). (Behrens and Rosen, 384-5).

• Step One: Look carefully at the assignment sheet. Does it tell you anything about your teacher's expectations?

Analysis What does this assignment ask you to do? " Show the connection " between Milgram's work and the My Lai massacre. What will you need to be able to show the connection? A description of both Milgram's work and the massacre. Will you be able to stop writing once you've described both parts? No--you then need to show the connection. You know that you don't have much space to develop extended descriptions of either Milgram's work or the My Lai massacre. In order to describe both and show the connection between the two, you'll need to keep the descriptions relatively short so that you don't tax your reader's patience.

• Step Two: Do you have any models of papers like this written for this prof in the past?

Analysis Do you already have enough information about Milgram and My Lai? If not, you'll definitely need to do library work and cite your sources appropriately. The paper prompt itself suggests that you look at Milgram's 1974 publication, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View . The paper doesn't ask you to include personal experiences or to contribute personal analysis, although as you draw out the connection you will undoubtedly rely on your interpretation of your sources and your understanding of events.

• Step Three: Ask questions. What more can you learn about the professor's expectations as a reader by asking directly?

Analysis For this paper, you know that your reader is not interested in seeing how you have felt obedient or disobedient in critical situations. Rather, this reader is looking for a more academic (less personal) investigation of the issue of obedience. This reader is trying to determine if you intellectually understand the issue (overobedience to authority), not if you have had pertinent experiences. As a result, the paper will be more formal and academic than if the paper were focused on your own attitudes and experiences.

• Step Four: Ask yourself what you know about the professor and about the discipline.

Analysis Do you know anything else about your reader from sample papers? From other papers you've written for this professor? From this teacher's behavior in class or her/his preferences for certain kinds of arguments and proof? Think carefully about what you've observed about this professor and use that information to help you shape your paper.

Related Information: Example Academic Audience Analysis: BUS402

Your essay should be 7-10 pages.

How effective is studying and discussing hypothetical dilemmas (i.e., studying cases) in preparing you for the pressures of actual dilemmas in the workplace? Develop your answer into an argument synthesis that draws on three or more cases in this chapter. If possible, refer to actual ethical dilemmas with which you've struggled in your own work. (Behrens and Rosen, 815)

Analysis A writer responding to this prompt would first notice that there are three key parts to the assignment:

• Answer the question about effectiveness of cases. The entire paper needs to support the answer.
• Synthesize information and arguments from three sample cases.
• Include personal experience and experience-based critical analysis.

You also know that you have plenty of "room" to develop all three key elements of the assignment because you can take up to ten pages. But this assignment does not specify format, use of outside sources, or level of formality, and so a writer might want to ask the teacher about those points or look closely at sample papers to gather more information.

Analysis You do have samples of cases, though, in the material that the assignment asks you to review. So you will be able to look at those cases and use those to help you write about your own experiences. In other words, your professor will expect you to frame your experiences in much the same way that the sample cases are set up. Your teacher will look for the same kinds of detail in your supporting evidence that appears in the sample cases. By looking carefully at the samples, writers can learn about what to include in their descriptions.

In particular, be sure to find out why the teacher is having you write the paper. Some teachers assign papers to help students learn information or expand their thinking on an issue. For these papers, "conventions" of academic papers are often less important than showing what you’ve learned or thought about. But some teachers assign papers to help students learn what it’s like to write in a specific discipline. For these teachers, academic "conventions" are extremely important.

Analysis You should also ask yourself what you know about your teacher and his or her approach to the discipline. Do you know, for example, that this teacher always expects papers to be carefully argued? Has this teacher emphasized the importance of summarizing cases accurately before referring to them? Will this professor be looking for an "argument synthesis" that shows how the cases all support one point or will this prof be more interested in seeing how the cases complicate one another? In other words, take the time to brainstorm about what you've learned about the teacher to help you meet his or her expectations for this paper. You probably know much more about the teacher than you might think, and asking questions about how the teacher treats this material in class will help you to remember those details that can help you shape your paper.

Does the assignment sheet tell you anything about your teacher's expectations?

• Can you tell if the paper needs to cite outside sources? If so, can the sources include interviews, field research, or just library sources?
• Does the assignment indicate whether you can use personal experiences? Personal (critical) analysis?

Use these two questions to help you determine how much of yourself you need to include in a paper. Most professors who expect to see personal experience or personal thinking on an issue say so pretty clearly in the assignment sheet.

• Does the paper have to follow a specific format? If so, what are the labels for parts of the paper? (Experienced writers use these labels to help generate material for the paper.)
• Does the assignment note specifically the level of formality of the paper? Does it, for instance, note that you should write it for possible publication in a journal?
• Does the assignment specifically note expectations about proofreading? (Often, a prof who reminds students about taking care with punctuation and spelling is asking for a more formal as well as a carefully edited paper.)

Use these questions to help you determine how formal or informal your reader expects your paper to be.

A professor who goes to the trouble of telling writers what to do expects to see those elements in a paper and is usually annoyed when writers violate those expectations. So always use the information your professors give you to meet their stated expectations in a paper. Don't assume all profs are the same!

If your professor is willing to give you a sample paper or to send you to look at a journal for examples of professional publications, you can learn a great deal about what your professor expects. Or if you have written papers for this professor before, look at those again to remind yourself of this professor’s expectations. As you look at the models and samples, ask yourself what you can tell about

• outside sources (library materials, interviews, surveys, observational research)
• personal experience or analysis
• formality of language
• standards of proofreading

What can you learn about the professor's expectations by asking directly?

If you haven’t been able to learn much from the assignment sheet or the samples, be sure to ask for more information. In particular, be sure to find out why the teacher is having you write the paper. Some teachers assign papers to help students learn information or expand their thinking on an issue. For these papers, "conventions" of academic papers are often less important than showing what you’ve learned or thought about. But some teachers assign papers to help students learn what it’s like to write in a specific discipline. For these teachers, academic "conventions" are extremely important.

• Is the discipline itself in transition? Do teachers who have just completed their degrees do different kinds of research than teachers who have been established in the profession for 15 years? Do they write different kinds of papers?
• What kinds of research does your professor do in his own work? Does the professor expect you to use the same kinds of research techniques?
• Has your professor assigned paper topics like this one for a number of years? Or is the prof experimenting with a new approach in the paper? (If this is a new assignment or approach, the prof might be more open to having students experiment with a wider range of responses.)
• What kinds of evidence do professionals in this discipline find most convincing? For instance, a philosophy professor might well be convinced by an argument that relies solely on logic and never refers to tangible evidence. An engineering prof, on the other hand, might respond to a logical paper by asking for a mathematical or physical model. Be sure to understand what "counts" as proof in the discipline you’re writing for.

Analyzing Non-Academic Audiences

Some teachers realize that much professional writing for their students is not going to be academic writing. These profs assign papers that specifically ask students to write to non-academic audiences. For example, one professor in Resource Management asks students to write to city council members for one assignment. How can you analyze other audiences to help you adapt your papers for their needs? As we saw when we looked at professors as the main audience, asking questions is one of the best techniques for analyzing audience.

Related Information: Nonacademic Audience Example: HIST342

History 342 - Discovering and Colonizing New Worlds

Imagine that you are an administrator for the school district. In light of the Columbus controversy, you have been assigned to draft a set of guidelines for teaching about Columbus in the district's elementary and junior high schools. These guidelines will explain official policy to parents and teachers in teaching children about Columbus and the significance of his voyages. They will also draw on arguments made on both sides of the controversy, as well as on historical facts on which both sides agree.

Draft these guidelines. Suggested format: a prefatory section giving the rationale for the guidelines and a set of purposes governing the new policies, followed by the guidelines themselves with an explanation of each one (specifically citing sources). A conclusion is optional. (Behrens and Rosen, 314)

• Step One: Reasons for Reading

Analysis You know that your audience will include parents, teachers, and other administrators. Because this is a complicated set of readers, you will almost certainly have to decide which ones will be your primary audience and which will be secondary audiences.

Because teachers will use the guidelines in creating their lesson plans, they will be your primary audience. But you cannot forget that parents will be reading the guidelines. Particularly in the preface and in the explanations of guidelines, you'll need to include more background information that will make clear to parents why the school district is making certain decisions about what to include or emphasize in teaching about Columbus.

• Step Two: Background Knowledge

Analysis Both teachers and parents will represent a wide spectrum in terms of knowledge, and you'll want to be sensitive to this issues when writing a document that combines both a complicated task and a diverse (though easily named) audience by balancing the amount of background information you include.

• Step Three: Bias

Analysis Both teachers and parents will represent a wide spectrum in terms of bias. This is a both politically and ethnically sensitive topic and you'll want to be aware to those issues when writing a document that combines both a complicated task and a diverse (though easily named) audience.

• Step Four: Other Possible Areas of Interest

Sometimes readers are shaped by their occupations, income levels, and political or religious affiliations. If these related areas seem important to your readers and to your topics, be sure to learn as much as you can so that you can shape your paper to be effective with these readers.

Reasons for Reading

• Why is this audience interested in reading your paper?
• Do they plan to base budget or policy decisions on your paper?
• Do they need background information?
• Are they looking for evidence of problems or solutions?

If you can determine just what your readers need from your paper, then you can be sure to give them the information or analysis they’re looking for. Always begin, then, by asking questions about why readers are reading!

Background Knowledge

• Are you writing to readers who have a great deal of information on your topic or those who know little about it?
• Have your readers had first-hand experience with your topic or are they likely to know only what they’ve read about it elsewhere?

The more you can determine about what your readers already know, the better able you will be to fill in background information they need or to skip details they already know in favor of more important "new" information and arguments.

• Do your readers have strong opinions about the topic you’re writing about?
• Have they already reached a conclusion that you need to change?
• Do they have any presuppositions that you need to take into account as you write your paper?
• Does gender make a difference on the topic you’re writing about? For instance, women tend to react much more strongly than men to issues of personal safety, and if you were writing about adding lights to public parking lots, the gender makeup of your audience might well affect the shape of your paper.
• Is age important to your topic? Again, senior citizens living on fixed retirement incomes often react differently than younger people on a wide range of topics.
• Can you think of any other biases that might affect your audience and thus your presentation of ideas in your paper? For instance, a paper directed to the city council probably should take account of members’ bias toward or against development.

Other Possible Areas of Interest

Writing for an audience.

Once you know your audience, you are ready to begin writing. Knowing your audience enables you to select or reject details for that specific audience. In addition, different audiences expect different types or formats for texts. Readers of Environmental Impact Statements don't want to read rhyming poetry extolling the virtues of nature. Mothers getting letters from children don't want to read a laboratory report about the events of the past month. Knowing the knowledge level of your audience will help you determine how to write, how much information to include, how long to make your text, how subjective or objective you should be, and how formal or informal your text should be.

Writing Purpose

Writers need to consider both audience and purpose in writing because the two elements affect writing significantly, and decisions about one affect the other. For instance, a main purpose in advertising is to sell a product. Advertisers seek the audience who is most likely to purchase a product. Once they have identified this group [called the "target audience"], they can write their ads to capture the attention of this audience. Hence, their purpose, which is to sell a product or service, shapes what they write. Consider WHY you are writing.

Details to Consider

Consider the following information about the expectations of your audience:

• Will the audience expect outside sources to be cited? What types of sources? Dated or current sources? Primary or secondary sources? Sources from academic journals or popular magazines? Should Internet sources be cited?
• Will the audience expect personal experience to be used? In the introduction? As evidence in the body of the text?
• Will the audience expect the text to be written in the first-person ("I") or in the third-person?
• Will the audience understand technical terms? Will they expect long explanations or definitions of key terms? Will they expect you to use the jargon of the field?
• Will the audience expect particular formats? Will they expect an essay, an article, a laboratory report? Will the text have a table of contents, a reference list, a title page, headings and subheadings, and extensive graphics or tables?

Readers versus Audience

Steve Reid, English Department To me a reader is an important concept to think about when you're writing for an audience. If you're thinking about writing for readers, generally, then what you need to do is ask yourself questions about how do readers process information. How do they make meaning, and how do they access key ideas in text and what are readers expectations when they pick up a printed text? Obviously those are going to vary from one discipline to the next. I like to make the distinction in my own mind between audience, i.e. target group of people who might pick up what I've written and read it, and readers who may have expectations about what's going to be in text. Readers may expect things to be in paragraphs. Readers may look for topic sentences. Readers will certainly try to anticipate what the overall claim is. Readers need cues about how to move from one section to the next. It's useful also to think, not just about target audience, but about how readers actually process textual information.

You can make the distinction between your audience as a target group (i.e., the group of people who may be attracted to your subject matter or your point-of-view) and your audience as readers (actual people who read your text, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word.)

An audience is the group of people who will be attracted to your writing. They may share certain subject interests, social or political beliefs, or certain demographic features. Once you know something about your target audience, you have some idea about their expectations of the subject, format, and style of writing.

When you use the term, "readers," however, you are, in addition, thinking about how your audience processes your text, or how they actually read. In addition to being interested in your ideas, these actual readers must wade through your words and sentences. Writers need to learn to anticipate the needs of their readers as well as the interests of their audiences.

Related Information: Guidelines for Readers

• A title or lead-in that focuses accurately on the content of the text . Readers don't like to be mislead about the focus of the text.
• Some sentences or paragraphs that set the context for this topic . Readers like to know why they should read this text.
• Sentences that give the thesis, claim, or main point of the text . Readers want to know the main point in order to process the information in the text.
• Paragraphs that focus on a single main idea . Readers like to deal with one major idea at a time, to avoid becoming confused.
• Transitions between paragraphs or major ideas . Readers like to know how the previous idea is connected or related to the next idea.
• Supporting evidence, facts, examples, statistics . Readers want some proof for assertions that your text makes.
• Clear sentences and an error-free style . Readers don't want to be distracted by awkward sentences, spelling errors, or grammatical problems.

Appealing to an Audience

Donna Lecourt, English Department At the first level, the appeal begins even in choice of topic, according to what the audience might already know as well as what the "concerns/issues" of that audience are in that context. (e.g. don't write about why Hamlet wanted to kill himself, or write about how Hamlet made you "feel" about your mother to an English professor). Then, at the next level, once it's influenced how you've chosen a topic and formulated a thesis, it influences what kind of proof you can use to prove or persuade. In other words, part of an appeal to the audience is to use the type of information they find the most valuable. Other appeals concern thinking about what they already find true, and trying to logically begin from there (e.g., We all accept X, so thus Y must be true.) Of course, you also appeal in terms of style (fitting the norms of the community as well as simply trying to amuse, not be pedantic, etc.). Finally, appeals involve how the writer presents herself, that is, what kind of persona does she create on paper.

Citation Information

Stephen Reid, Kate Kiefer, and Dawn Kowalski. (1994 - 2013). Adapting to Your Audience. The WAC Clearinghouse. Colorado State University. Available at https://wac.colostate.edu/repository/writing/guides/.

Copyright Information

Copyright © 1994-2024 Colorado State University and/or this site's authors, developers, and contributors . Some material displayed on this site is used with permission.

Module 3: Writing Essentials

Audience analysis, learning objective.

• Describe strategies for analyzing the audience

Writing in college is all about your audience, which means you will need to spend some time getting to know your readers. This is particularly true for argumentative writing, where you are writing to persuade someone. For example, you might be writing about a controversial topic where your readers may already have a strong opinion. Knowing the ideas and potential biases of your audience is key to making your writing effective.

This doesn’t mean you have to know the people you are writing for personally. It does mean you need to do some thinking and possibly some researching about who your audience is, what that audience knows about your topic or issue, and what biases or opinions that audience may already have.

Let’s look at an example. Say you have decided to write about reducing the costs of textbooks at your college. You first have to decide who you need to convince. Since most of your fellow college students would agree with you on an issue like this, if you’re going to make a difference, you would need to target a different audience—perhaps college teachers and administrators. A good first step would be to head to the web to see what college teachers and administrators think and have written about this issue. Then, as a second step, if you could interview a college teacher or administrator on your campus, you would have even more information.

Clementa Carlos Pinckney was a Democratic senator in the South Carolina legislature. He represented the 45th District from 2000 until his death. From 1997 through 2000, he was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives.

In the video below, President Obama’s addresses mourners gathered in Charleston, South Carolina, to honor Reverend Pinckney following his death. While Obama’s address was to those in attendance, he is clearly aware of and speaking to a national audience.

Watch the following video (or read the transcript) and think about the intended and unintended audiences. It’s easier to think about audiences for a public speech than it is for an essay, but the same rhetorical principles of audience analysis apply.

You can view the  transcript for “The President Honors the Life of Reverend Clementa Pinckney” here (opens in new window).

Think about the video or the transcript as you answer the practice questions below.

Now you know a little bit about the people to whom President Obama was speaking and others whom he did not address or consider directly but who may have heard or read his speech nonetheless. The president had an immediate purpose to eulogize Reverend Pinckney for an audience of mourners, but he was also speaking to a more general audience of U.S. citizens concerned about racism, gun violence, civil rights, and inequality. The claims and evidence from his speech may, therefore, be relevant to other audiences who are concerned about similar issues and share some of the same ideas and values.

This presentation explains important components to consider when creating an argument for your audience.

Audience Awareness

Even if you aren’t planning to become a politician, you have to think about the audience for everything you say and do. This is even more important with social media. Some of the best examples of not thinking about unintended audiences or failing to build common ground come from social media. Think about the following fake social media post in terms of audience and common ground:

Figure 2 . Louise was not aware of her audience when making this social media post bashing her employer.

What’s wrong here? Louise works at Generic Store and makes a social media post speaking poorly of her employer and admitting to criminal behavior. To add to that, she tags the store’s social media account in the post. Obviously, Louise is not considering unintended audiences. She may have meant to share her post only with “Badrhetoricgirl” and “nocommonground1,” but at least sixteen others have seen and responded to her post. It’s very likely that her employer would come across this post and take disciplinary action against Louise.

This example may seem ridiculous: maybe you are already wise to social media privacy settings, but this same kind of mistake takes place frequently in student writing and speaking.

Check your understanding of audience awareness in the following interactive.

• Audience Analysis. Provided by : University of Mississippi. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Argument and Analysis. Provided by : Excelsior College Online Writing Lab. Located at : https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/argument-and-audience/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Knowing Your Audience. Provided by : Georgia State University Dept. of English. Project : APLU-PLC Adaptive Courseware for English Comp Project . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Using what you know about audience. Provided by : University of Mississippi. Project : PLATO. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• The President Honors the Life of Reverend Clementa Pinckney. Authored by : The Obama White House. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRvBzzR5tdA&feature=youtu.be . License : All Rights Reserved . License Terms : Standard YouTube License

Audience Analysis in Speech and Composition

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

In the preparation of a speech or a composition, audience analysis is the process of determining the values, interests, and attitudes of the intended or projected listeners or readers.

Karl Terryberry notes that "successful writers tailor their messages . . . to the needs and values of the audience . . . . Defining the audience helps writers set communication goals" ( Writing for the Health Professions , 2005).

Examples and Observations of Audience Analysis

• "The goals of clarity , propriety, and persuasiveness dictate that we adapt our arguments , as well as the language in which they are cast, to an audience. Even a well-constructed argument may fail to convince if it is not adapted to your actual audience. "Adapting arguments to an audience means that we must know something about the audience we are addressing. The process of audience adaptation begins with an effort to construct an accurate profile of the audience members that considers such factors as their age, race, and economic status; their values and beliefs; and their attitudes toward you and your topic. (James A. Herrick, Argumentation: Understanding and Shaping Arguments . Strata, 2007)

Audience Analysis in Business Writing

• "You're in a new job and eager to impress. So don't let your heart sink if your first big task is to write a report . It's likely to be read by a whole raft of people — and that could include the managing director. . . . "'A great deal of thinking should go into the report before you actually start to write anything,' says Park Sims, adviser to Industrial Society Learning and Development and a director of Park Sims Associates. . . "'You cannot overestimate the importance of audience analysis ,' says Park. 'Are they friends or enemies, competitors or customers? All that will influence mightily what level of detail you go into and what language and style of writing you use. What do they know about the subject already? Can you use jargon?'" (Karen Hainsworth, "Wowing Your Executive Audience." The Guardian , May 25, 2002)
• " Audience analysis is always a central task in document planning. In most cases, you discover that you must address multiple audiences with varied reasons for using your document. Some will need help getting started; others will want to use the product at advanced levels . . .. "When you have pictured the users of your document and their motives and goals, you are better able to organize information to be most helpful to your audience." (James G. Paradis and Muriel L. Zimmerman, The MIT Guide to Science and Engineering Communication , 2nd ed. The MIT Press, 2002)

Audience Analysis in Composition

"[A]n audience analysis guide sheet can be an effective intervention tool for student writers. The worksheet that follows can be used for this purpose, even when students are using new media.

• Who is my audience? Who do I want my audience to be? What knowledge about the subject does my audience already have?
• What does my audience think, believe, or understand about this topic before he or she reads my essay?
• What do I want my audience to think, believe, or understand about this topic after he or she reads my essay?
• How do I want my audience to think of me? What role do I want to play in addressing my audience?"

(Irene L. Clark, Concepts in Composition: Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing , 2nd ed. Routledge, 2012)

Analyzing an Audience in Public Speaking

"You might think about these questions as the who, what, where, when, and whys of audience interaction:

• Who is in this audience?
• What opinions does your audience already have about the topic you are presenting?
• Where are you addressing the audience? What things about the context or occasion might influence your audience members' interest and dispositions?
• When are you addressing the audience? This is not just a matter of the time of day, but also why your topic is timely for the audience.
• Why would your audience be interested in your topic? Why should these people make a particular judgment, change their minds, or take a specific action? In other words, how does your goal intersect with their interests, concerns, and aspirations?

This analysis will help you figure out how to make effective choices in your speech." (William Keith and Christian O. Lundberg, Public Speaking: Choice and Responsibility , 2nd. ed. Wadsworth, 2016)

George Campbell (1719-1796) and Audience Analysis

• "[Campbell's] notions on audience analysis and adaptation and on language control and style perhaps have had the longest range influence on rhetorical practice and theory. With considerable foresight, he told prospective speakers what they need to know about audiences in general and audiences in particular. . . . "[In The Philosophy of Rhetoric , Campbell] moved to an analysis of the things which a speaker should know about his particular audience. These include such matters as educational level, moral culture, habits, occupation, political leanings, religious affiliations, and locale." (James L. Golden, The Rhetoric of Western Thought , 8th ed. Kendall/Hunt, 2004)

Audience Analysis and the New Rhetoric

• "The New Rhetoric recognizes situation (or context) as the basic principle of communication and revives invention as an indispensable component of rhetoric. In so doing, it establishes audience and audience analysis as important to the rhetorical process and vital to invention. [Chaim] Perelman's and [Stephen] Toulmin 's theories especially establish audience belief as the basis for all rhetorical activity (which covers most written and spoken discourse), and as the starting point for the construction of arguments. Later, theorists applied the insights of New Rhetoric theory specifically to composition theory and instruction." (Theresa Enos, ed., Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age . Taylor & Francis, 1996)

Hazards and Limitations of Audience Analysis

• "[I]f you pay so much attention to the audience that you inhibit your self-expression, audience analysis has gone too far." (Kristin R. Woolever, About Writing: A Rhetoric for Advanced Writers . Wadsworth, 1991)
• "As Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford point out, a key element of much audience analysis is 'the assumption that knowledge of the audience's attitudes, beliefs, and expectations is not only possible (via observation and analysis) but essential' (1984, 156). . . "Due to the pervasiveness of an audience-oriented inventional strategy in the history of rhetoric, numerous analytic methods have been developed over the years to aid the rhetor in this hermeneutic task. From Aristotle's early efforts to categorize audience responses to George Campbell's attempts at engaging the findings of faculty psychology to contemporary demographic attempts to apply cognitive psychology, the tradition offers a vast array of tools for audience analysis, each of which relies on some visible criteria in order to determine an audience's beliefs or values. "Nevertheless, these efforts to infer attitudes and beliefs from more observable phenomenon present the analyst with a host of difficulties. One of the most sensitive problems is that the results of such analyses frequently end up looking like a politically egregious form of stereotyping (not unlike the practice of racial profiling)." (John Muckelbauer, The Future of Invention: Rhetoric, Postmodernism, and the Problem of Change . SUNY Press, 2008)
• What Is a Rhetorical Device? Definition, List, Examples
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How to Conduct Audience Analysis

Last Updated: November 20, 2023 Fact Checked

Sample Audience Analysis

Planning ahead, conducting the analysis, analysis document.

This article was co-authored by Janet Peischel . Janet Peischel is a Writer and Digital Media Expert and the Owner of Top of Mind Marketing. With more than 15 years of consulting experience, she develops content strategies and builds online brands for her clients. Prior to consulting, Janet spent over 15 years in the marketing industry, in positions such as the Vice President of Marketing Communications for the Bank of America. Janet holds a BA and MA from the University of Washington. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 491,558 times.

To make any type of writing as effective as possible, it is important that the writer understands his or her audience. What the reader wants, needs, knows, and feels about a topic are important factors in how the work will be received, and the more you know about the reader, the more effective your writing can be. This is true regardless of whether you are writing a speech, a scientific article, or instructions for someone applying for a loan or installing a piece of software. These instructions will help you analyze your audience and develop a strategy to target your writing appropriately.

• For example, will your document be read by someone trying to install some shelves? Employees of a certain company? Computer programmers trying to work out a bug in some new software?
• Consider why this audience will be reading your document. What task will it help them perform, or what do they need to know?

• You will almost always want to ascertain your audience's levels of knowledge about and interest in the topic.

• Sometimes, you may be able to find information that someone else has already collected in the form of surveys or marketing research that can stand in for collecting your own data.

• Try to avoid creating questions that lead your participants toward a given answer, even if you think it is correct. For example: "Now that we've shown you how effective our product can be, how likely are you to buy it?" or "How do you feel about the president's oppressive tax policies?"
• Avoid "double-barreled" questions. Questions that ask about more than one thing at a time may confuse your participants or result in unreliable data. For example, you shouldn't ask: "How often do you read articles about science and share them with other people?" Instead, break this into two questions: "How often do you read articles about science?" and "How often do you share articles about science with other people?"
• If you use a survey, keep it as simple and short as possible. [6] X Research source

• For example, if you think your audience is mostly women, try to select a sample that reflects that.
• Other characteristics that might be useful in selecting participants could be their occupation or employer (especially if you are writing something for people in a particular field), their ethnic backgrounds, the city or neighbourhood in which they live, or their membership in a particular organization.
• Which characteristics are most important will vary based on the type of document you are producing and the audience you are hoping to reach.

• If you are using a survey, you may want to let your participants remain anonymous, especially if you are asking them about anything sensitive or personal. This can lead to more honest responses.
• If you are interviewing participants in person, you may find it useful to ask clarifying questions or probe for more information by saying things like "Can you tell me more about that?" or "Tell me why you feel that way." At the same time, how you conduct the interviews can affect how people answer your questions, so you'll need to work hard not to show your own biases or make your participants feel like they should answer in a particular way.
• For interviews or informal conversations, it's often a good idea to record the conversation for later reference, if your participants agree to this. Never record anyone without their permission, as this may be a violation of state law.

• If you need to conduct in-depth statistical analyses of your data, there are software programs that can help you, such as Stata or SPSS. These programs are costly though, and for most purposes, calculating simple percentages is more than adequate. Common applications like Excel can help you with organizing and analyzing your data. Putting your questions across the top row in a data sheet and then placing each participant's responses in the rows below will allow you to quickly summarize the range of responses you got for each question.
• If your analytical tool used open-ended questions, i.e. questions that do not specify a limited range of possible answers (for example "How do you feel about Company X?"), you will probably want to classify people's responses into categories (for example: "skeptical," "hostile," "uncertain," or "positive") so that you can summarize how large numbers of your participants responded (e.g. "the majority had a negative impression of Company X").

• The sample document at the top of this article is a good example of an audience profile.

• If your audience will be reading your document while carrying out a task, a technical manual or instruction sheet made up of bullet points and possibly diagrams may be most effective.
• On the other hand, if you are hoping to inform professionals about new research in their field, an article or newsletter format might be best.

• Outlines are also a good way of developing headings for the different sections in your document, which will be useful in helping readers identify the key pieces of information they are looking for.

• For example, if your audience is highly educated and/or well-versed in the topic you are writing about, the use of highly specific and technical vocabulary may be acceptable or even helpful. If your audience is not well-informed about your topic, such language should be avoided.
• Likewise, if your audience is likely to be reading your work while carrying out a specific task or in a work environment with many distractions, the use of short, simple sentences is advisable. If they'll be reading your work at home and giving it their undivided attention, varying sentence length and structure will make your writing more compelling and enjoyable.

Community Q&A

• If there is more than one audience for your document, you can write sections specifically pertaining to the corresponding audiences, or write in one particular fashion that applies across the board. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Similarly, if there is a wide variability in the audience, cater to the majority--write to the majority of the people who will be reading the document. References to other sources with alternative information may need to be included to aid those in the minority. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Demographic characteristics of the audience can help determine the style and content of a document. Age groups, areas of residence, gender, and political preferences, for example, are all potentially important. Paying attention to these features of the audience can also help sidestep any offensive remarks or topics that the audience would not relate to or appreciate. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ Janet Peischel. Digital Media Expert. Expert Interview. 30 March 2021.
• ↑ https://www.comm.pitt.edu/oral-comm-lab/audience-analysis
• ↑ https://www.comm.pitt.edu/tips-analyzing-audience
• ↑ https://guides.library.tulsacc.edu/c.php?g=1003884&p=7479390
• ↑ http://web.mit.edu/surveys/survey-guidelines.pdf
• ↑ https://pressbooks.pub/coccoer/chapter/audience-analysis/

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Essay Papers Writing Online

Tips and techniques for writing effective and powerful analytical essays.

Are you struggling to craft an effective analytical essay? Do you find yourself getting lost in a sea of information or unsure of how to present your analysis in a clear and concise manner? Look no further – this step-by-step guide will provide you with valuable tips and strategies to elevate your analytical essay writing skills to the next level.

Writing an analytical essay involves carefully examining a subject or topic and providing a thorough analysis and interpretation of the information gathered. It requires critical thinking, attention to detail, and the ability to express ideas and arguments coherently. In this guide, we will explore various techniques and approaches to help you develop and refine your analytical writing skills, allowing you to tackle any analytical essay with confidence and precision.

One crucial aspect of writing an analytical essay is conducting thorough research. To ensure your essay is well-informed and robust, it’s important to delve into reputable sources, such as academic journals, books, and reliable websites. By gathering a wide range of sources related to your topic, you will acquire a solid understanding of the subject matter, which will enable you to provide a comprehensive analysis in your essay.

Another essential element of analytical essay writing is the development of a strong thesis statement. Your thesis should present a clear and concise argument or claim that you will support throughout your essay. It should be specific, debatable, and relevant to the topic at hand. By crafting a well-defined thesis statement, you provide the backbone for your entire essay, guiding your analysis and helping you maintain a focused approach.

Furthermore, an effective analytical essay requires careful organization and structure. Divide your essay into logical paragraphs, each addressing a specific point or aspect of your analysis. Use topic sentences to introduce each paragraph, guiding your reader and providing a clear roadmap of your essay’s progression. Additionally, utilize transitional phrases and words to create smooth transitions between paragraphs, ensuring a cohesive and coherent flow.

Finding a Strong Topic for Your Essay

Choosing the right topic is a crucial first step in writing an analytical essay. The topic sets the tone for the entire essay and determines its scope and focus. It is important to select a topic that is engaging, relevant, and allows for in-depth analysis. This section will provide you with helpful strategies for finding a strong topic that will captivate your readers.

Gathering and Evaluating Reliable Sources

One of the key aspects of writing an analytical essay is gathering and evaluating reliable sources. The quality of your sources can greatly impact the strength and credibility of your arguments. In this section, we will explore the importance of finding trustworthy sources and discuss strategies for evaluating their reliability.

When conducting research for your essay, it is crucial to seek out sources that are authoritative and trustworthy. Reliable sources are those that have been written by experts in the field or have been published in reputable academic journals. These sources are often backed by extensive research and provide accurate and unbiased information.

When evaluating the reliability of a source, there are several factors to consider. Firstly, check the author’s credentials and expertise in the subject matter. Look for individuals who have relevant qualifications or experience in the field. This will help establish their credibility and ensure that they are knowledgeable on the topic.

In addition to the author’s credentials, consider the publication or website where the source is found. Reputable academic journals, books from respected publishers, and reputable websites such as government or educational institutions are generally more reliable sources of information. Be cautious of sources from unknown or biased sources, as they may not provide accurate or unbiased information.

Furthermore, it is important to analyze the content of the source itself. Look for evidence-based arguments, logical reasoning, and a balanced presentation of different perspectives. A reliable source should provide well-supported claims and back them up with relevant evidence and examples.

Finally, consider the date of publication. While older sources can still provide valuable insights, it is important to have up-to-date information, especially in fields that are rapidly evolving or undergoing significant changes. Check for recent studies and publications to ensure that your information is current.

In conclusion, gathering and evaluating reliable sources is a critical step in writing an analytical essay. By seeking out trustworthy sources and analyzing their credibility, you can strengthen your arguments and provide a solid foundation for your essay. Keep in mind the importance of author expertise, publication credibility, content analysis, and the recency of the information. Through careful evaluation, you can ensure that your essay is well-informed and persuasive.

Creating an Outline for Your Essay

One of the most important steps in the essay writing process is creating an outline. An outline serves as a roadmap for your essay, helping you to organize your thoughts and ideas in a logical and coherent manner.

When creating an outline for your essay, it’s important to start by identifying the main points or arguments that you want to make. These main points will serve as the foundation of your essay and should be presented in a clear and concise manner. You can think of these main points as the “backbone” of your essay.

Once you have identified the main points, you can then begin to develop subpoints that support and expand upon each main point. These subpoints should provide specific examples, evidence, or analysis to strengthen your main arguments. In essence, they help to fill in the details and provide a deeper understanding of your main points.

Organizing your main points and subpoints can be done in various ways. One common method is to use a hierarchical structure, such as an outline with Roman numerals, capital letters, and Arabic numerals. Another method is to use bullet points or a numbered list. You can choose the method that works best for you, based on the complexity of your essay and the level of detail you want to include in your outline.

As you create your outline, it’s important to keep in mind the overall structure of your essay. Your introduction should provide a brief overview of the topic and present your thesis statement. The body paragraphs should present and develop your main points and subpoints, providing evidence and analysis to support your arguments. Finally, your conclusion should summarize your main points and restate your thesis in a concise and compelling manner.

Remember that your outline is a flexible tool that can be revised and adjusted as you work on your essay. It’s not set in stone and can be modified as needed to better reflect your evolving ideas and arguments. Don’t be afraid to make changes and reorganize your outline as you go along.

In conclusion, creating an outline for your essay is an essential step in the writing process. It helps you to organize your thoughts, develop your arguments, and maintain a logical flow throughout your essay. By investing time and effort into creating a strong outline, you’ll set yourself up for success and make the writing process much smoother.

Developing a Clear and Coherent Argument

When it comes to writing analytical essays, one of the most important aspects is developing a clear and coherent argument. It is essential to have a well-structured and logical argument in order to effectively convey your ideas and convince your readers.

First and foremost, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of the topic you are writing about. Take the time to thoroughly research and gather relevant information, as this will provide you with the necessary knowledge to build a strong argument. Additionally, make sure to identify any key terms or concepts that are essential to your argument, as this will help you stay focused and ensure coherence throughout your essay.

Once you have a solid foundation of knowledge, it is important to organize your argument in a logical manner. Start by outlining the main points or claims you want to make, and then provide supporting evidence or examples for each of these points. Be sure to clearly state your thesis statement, which should summarize the main argument you are making in your essay.

In order to maintain coherence in your argument, it is important to use logical transitions between your ideas. This can be done through the use of transitional words and phrases, such as “however,” “in addition,” or “on the other hand.” These transitions will help guide your reader through your argument and ensure that your ideas flow smoothly from one point to the next.

Lastly, it is crucial to anticipate and address counterarguments in your essay. By acknowledging opposing viewpoints and effectively refuting them, you can further strengthen your overall argument. This demonstrates that you have considered multiple perspectives and have arrived at your own well-supported conclusion.

In conclusion, developing a clear and coherent argument is essential when writing analytical essays. By thoroughly researching your topic, organizing your ideas in a logical manner, using transitions effectively, and addressing counterarguments, you can effectively convey your ideas and make a convincing argument to your readers.

Strengthening Your Essay with Relevant Evidence

In order to create a compelling and persuasive analytical essay, it is essential to back up your arguments with relevant evidence. This evidence serves to support your claims and gives your essay credibility and authority.

When selecting evidence for your essay, it is important to choose examples and facts that are directly related to your topic. This will help to establish a strong connection between your argument and the evidence you present. Additionally, using relevant evidence allows you to make a more convincing case and gives your readers confidence in the validity of your assertions.

Relevant evidence can come in various forms, such as statistics, research studies, expert opinions, and real-life examples. By incorporating a mix of different types of evidence, you can strengthen the overall impact of your essay and appeal to a wider range of readers.

To ensure that the evidence you include in your essay is relevant, it is necessary to thoroughly research your topic and gather information from reliable sources. This will help you to find the most up-to-date and accurate evidence to support your arguments.

In addition to choosing relevant evidence, it is also crucial to properly integrate it into your essay. Make sure to clearly introduce each piece of evidence and explain how it supports your main points. Use strong and persuasive language to highlight the significance of the evidence and its connection to your argument.

Remember that the purpose of using relevant evidence is not only to support your argument but also to engage your readers and help them understand your perspective. By presenting well-chosen and compelling evidence, you can make your essay more persuasive and leave a lasting impression on your audience.

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6.1 Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Content

Learning objectives.

• Identify the four common academic purposes.
• Identify audience, tone, and content.
• Apply purpose, audience, tone, and content to a specific assignment.

Imagine reading one long block of text, with each idea blurring into the next. Even if you are reading a thrilling novel or an interesting news article, you will likely lose interest in what the author has to say very quickly. During the writing process, it is helpful to position yourself as a reader. Ask yourself whether you can focus easily on each point you make. One technique that effective writers use is to begin a fresh paragraph for each new idea they introduce.

Paragraphs separate ideas into logical, manageable chunks. One paragraph focuses on only one main idea and presents coherent sentences to support that one point. Because all the sentences in one paragraph support the same point, a paragraph may stand on its own. To create longer assignments and to discuss more than one point, writers group together paragraphs.

Three elements shape the content of each paragraph:

• Purpose . The reason the writer composes the paragraph.
• Tone . The attitude the writer conveys about the paragraph’s subject.
• Audience . The individual or group whom the writer intends to address.

Figure 6.1 Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Content Triangle

The assignment’s purpose, audience, and tone dictate what the paragraph covers and how it will support one main point. This section covers how purpose, audience, and tone affect reading and writing paragraphs.

Identifying Common Academic Purposes

The purpose for a piece of writing identifies the reason you write a particular document. Basically, the purpose of a piece of writing answers the question “Why?” For example, why write a play? To entertain a packed theater. Why write instructions to the babysitter? To inform him or her of your schedule and rules. Why write a letter to your congressman? To persuade him to address your community’s needs.

In academic settings, the reasons for writing fulfill four main purposes: to summarize, to analyze, to synthesize, and to evaluate. You will encounter these four purposes not only as you read for your classes but also as you read for work or pleasure. Because reading and writing work together, your writing skills will improve as you read. To learn more about reading in the writing process, see Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” .

Eventually, your instructors will ask you to complete assignments specifically designed to meet one of the four purposes. As you will see, the purpose for writing will guide you through each part of the paper, helping you make decisions about content and style. For now, identifying these purposes by reading paragraphs will prepare you to write individual paragraphs and to build longer assignments.

Summary Paragraphs

A summary shrinks a large amount of information into only the essentials. You probably summarize events, books, and movies daily. Think about the last blockbuster movie you saw or the last novel you read. Chances are, at some point in a casual conversation with a friend, coworker, or classmate, you compressed all the action in a two-hour film or in a two-hundred-page book into a brief description of the major plot movements. While in conversation, you probably described the major highlights, or the main points in just a few sentences, using your own vocabulary and manner of speaking.

Similarly, a summary paragraph condenses a long piece of writing into a smaller paragraph by extracting only the vital information. A summary uses only the writer’s own words. Like the summary’s purpose in daily conversation, the purpose of an academic summary paragraph is to maintain all the essential information from a longer document. Although shorter than the original piece of writing, a summary should still communicate all the key points and key support. In other words, summary paragraphs should be succinct and to the point.

A summary of the report should present all the main points and supporting details in brief. Read the following summary of the report written by a student:

Notice how the summary retains the key points made by the writers of the original report but omits most of the statistical data. Summaries need not contain all the specific facts and figures in the original document; they provide only an overview of the essential information.

Analysis Paragraphs

An analysis separates complex materials in their different parts and studies how the parts relate to one another. The analysis of simple table salt, for example, would require a deconstruction of its parts—the elements sodium (Na) and chloride (Cl). Then, scientists would study how the two elements interact to create the compound NaCl, or sodium chloride, which is also called simple table salt.

Analysis is not limited to the sciences, of course. An analysis paragraph in academic writing fulfills the same purpose. Instead of deconstructing compounds, academic analysis paragraphs typically deconstruct documents. An analysis takes apart a primary source (an essay, a book, an article, etc.) point by point. It communicates the main points of the document by examining individual points and identifying how the points relate to one another.

Take a look at a student’s analysis of the journal report.

Notice how the analysis does not simply repeat information from the original report, but considers how the points within the report relate to one another. By doing this, the student uncovers a discrepancy between the points that are backed up by statistics and those that require additional information. Analyzing a document involves a close examination of each of the individual parts and how they work together.

Synthesis Paragraphs

A synthesis combines two or more items to create an entirely new item. Consider the electronic musical instrument aptly named the synthesizer. It looks like a simple keyboard but displays a dashboard of switches, buttons, and levers. With the flip of a few switches, a musician may combine the distinct sounds of a piano, a flute, or a guitar—or any other combination of instruments—to create a new sound. The purpose of the synthesizer is to blend together the notes from individual instruments to form new, unique notes.

The purpose of an academic synthesis is to blend individual documents into a new document. An academic synthesis paragraph considers the main points from one or more pieces of writing and links the main points together to create a new point, one not replicated in either document.

Take a look at a student’s synthesis of several sources about underage drinking.

Notice how the synthesis paragraphs consider each source and use information from each to create a new thesis. A good synthesis does not repeat information; the writer uses a variety of sources to create a new idea.

Evaluation Paragraphs

An evaluation judges the value of something and determines its worth. Evaluations in everyday experiences are often not only dictated by set standards but also influenced by opinion and prior knowledge. For example, at work, a supervisor may complete an employee evaluation by judging his subordinate’s performance based on the company’s goals. If the company focuses on improving communication, the supervisor will rate the employee’s customer service according to a standard scale. However, the evaluation still depends on the supervisor’s opinion and prior experience with the employee. The purpose of the evaluation is to determine how well the employee performs at his or her job.

An academic evaluation communicates your opinion, and its justifications, about a document or a topic of discussion. Evaluations are influenced by your reading of the document, your prior knowledge, and your prior experience with the topic or issue. Because an evaluation incorporates your point of view and reasons for your point of view, it typically requires more critical thinking and a combination of summary, analysis, and synthesis skills. Thus evaluation paragraphs often follow summary, analysis, and synthesis paragraphs. Read a student’s evaluation paragraph.

Notice how the paragraph incorporates the student’s personal judgment within the evaluation. Evaluating a document requires prior knowledge that is often based on additional research.

When reviewing directions for assignments, look for the verbs summarize , analyze , synthesize , or evaluate . Instructors often use these words to clearly indicate the assignment’s purpose. These words will cue you on how to complete the assignment because you will know its exact purpose.

Read the following paragraphs about four films and then identify the purpose of each paragraph.

• This film could easily have been cut down to less than two hours. By the final scene, I noticed that most of my fellow moviegoers were snoozing in their seats and were barely paying attention to what was happening on screen. Although the director sticks diligently to the book, he tries too hard to cram in all the action, which is just too ambitious for such a detail-oriented story. If you want my advice, read the book and give the movie a miss.
• During the opening scene, we learn that the character Laura is adopted and that she has spent the past three years desperately trying to track down her real parents. Having exhausted all the usual options—adoption agencies, online searches, family trees, and so on—she is on the verge of giving up when she meets a stranger on a bus. The chance encounter leads to a complicated chain of events that ultimately result in Laura getting her lifelong wish. But is it really what she wants? Throughout the rest of the film, Laura discovers that sometimes the past is best left where it belongs.
• To create the feeling of being gripped in a vice, the director, May Lee, uses a variety of elements to gradually increase the tension. The creepy, haunting melody that subtly enhances the earlier scenes becomes ever more insistent, rising to a disturbing crescendo toward the end of the movie. The desperation of the actors, combined with the claustrophobic atmosphere and tight camera angles create a realistic firestorm, from which there is little hope of escape. Walking out of the theater at the end feels like staggering out of a Roman dungeon.
• The scene in which Campbell and his fellow prisoners assist the guards in shutting down the riot immediately strikes the viewer as unrealistic. Based on the recent reports on prison riots in both Detroit and California, it seems highly unlikely that a posse of hardened criminals will intentionally help their captors at the risk of inciting future revenge from other inmates. Instead, both news reports and psychological studies indicate that prisoners who do not actively participate in a riot will go back to their cells and avoid conflict altogether. Examples of this lack of attention to detail occur throughout the film, making it almost unbearable to watch.

Collaboration

Share with a classmate and compare your answers.

Writing at Work

Thinking about the purpose of writing a report in the workplace can help focus and structure the document. A summary should provide colleagues with a factual overview of your findings without going into too much specific detail. In contrast, an evaluation should include your personal opinion, along with supporting evidence, research, or examples to back it up. Listen for words such as summarize , analyze , synthesize , or evaluate when your boss asks you to complete a report to help determine a purpose for writing.

Consider the essay most recently assigned to you. Identify the most effective academic purpose for the assignment.

My assignment: ____________________________________________

My purpose: ____________________________________________

Identifying the Audience

Imagine you must give a presentation to a group of executives in an office. Weeks before the big day, you spend time creating and rehearsing the presentation. You must make important, careful decisions not only about the content but also about your delivery. Will the presentation require technology to project figures and charts? Should the presentation define important words, or will the executives already know the terms? Should you wear your suit and dress shirt? The answers to these questions will help you develop an appropriate relationship with your audience, making them more receptive to your message.

Now imagine you must explain the same business concepts from your presentation to a group of high school students. Those important questions you previously answered may now require different answers. The figures and charts may be too sophisticated, and the terms will certainly require definitions. You may even reconsider your outfit and sport a more casual look. Because the audience has shifted, your presentation and delivery will shift as well to create a new relationship with the new audience.

In these two situations, the audience—the individuals who will watch and listen to the presentation—plays a role in the development of presentation. As you prepare the presentation, you visualize the audience to anticipate their expectations and reactions. What you imagine affects the information you choose to present and how you will present it. Then, during the presentation, you meet the audience in person and discover immediately how well you perform.

Although the audience for writing assignments—your readers—may not appear in person, they play an equally vital role. Even in everyday writing activities, you identify your readers’ characteristics, interests, and expectations before making decisions about what you write. In fact, thinking about audience has become so common that you may not even detect the audience-driven decisions.

For example, you update your status on a social networking site with the awareness of who will digitally follow the post. If you want to brag about a good grade, you may write the post to please family members. If you want to describe a funny moment, you may write with your friends’ senses of humor in mind. Even at work, you send e-mails with an awareness of an unintended receiver who could intercept the message.

In other words, being aware of “invisible” readers is a skill you most likely already possess and one you rely on every day. Consider the following paragraphs. Which one would the author send to her parents? Which one would she send to her best friend?

Last Saturday, I volunteered at a local hospital. The visit was fun and rewarding. I even learned how to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR. Unfortunately, I think caught a cold from one of the patients. This week, I will rest in bed and drink plenty of clear fluids. I hope I am well by next Saturday to volunteer again.

OMG! You won’t believe this! My advisor forced me to do my community service hours at this hospital all weekend! We learned CPR but we did it on dummies, not even real peeps. And some kid sneezed on me and got me sick! I was so bored and sniffling all weekend; I hope I don’t have to go back next week. I def do NOT want to miss the basketball tournament!

Most likely, you matched each paragraph to its intended audience with little hesitation. Because each paragraph reveals the author’s relationship with her intended readers, you can identify the audience fairly quickly. When writing your own paragraphs, you must engage with your audience to build an appropriate relationship given your subject. Imagining your readers during each stage of the writing process will help you make decisions about your writing. Ultimately, the people you visualize will affect what and how you write.

While giving a speech, you may articulate an inspiring or critical message, but if you left your hair a mess and laced up mismatched shoes, your audience would not take you seriously. They may be too distracted by your appearance to listen to your words.

Similarly, grammar and sentence structure serve as the appearance of a piece of writing. Polishing your work using correct grammar will impress your readers and allow them to focus on what you have to say.

Because focusing on audience will enhance your writing, your process, and your finished product, you must consider the specific traits of your audience members. Use your imagination to anticipate the readers’ demographics, education, prior knowledge, and expectations.

• Demographics. These measure important data about a group of people, such as their age range, their ethnicity, their religious beliefs, or their gender. Certain topics and assignments will require these kinds of considerations about your audience. For other topics and assignments, these measurements may not influence your writing in the end. Regardless, it is important to consider demographics when you begin to think about your purpose for writing.
• Education. Education considers the audience’s level of schooling. If audience members have earned a doctorate degree, for example, you may need to elevate your style and use more formal language. Or, if audience members are still in college, you could write in a more relaxed style. An audience member’s major or emphasis may also dictate your writing.
• Prior knowledge. This refers to what the audience already knows about your topic. If your readers have studied certain topics, they may already know some terms and concepts related to the topic. You may decide whether to define terms and explain concepts based on your audience’s prior knowledge. Although you cannot peer inside the brains of your readers to discover their knowledge, you can make reasonable assumptions. For instance, a nursing major would presumably know more about health-related topics than a business major would.
• Expectations. These indicate what readers will look for while reading your assignment. Readers may expect consistencies in the assignment’s appearance, such as correct grammar and traditional formatting like double-spaced lines and legible font. Readers may also have content-based expectations given the assignment’s purpose and organization. In an essay titled “The Economics of Enlightenment: The Effects of Rising Tuition,” for example, audience members may expect to read about the economic repercussions of college tuition costs.

On your own sheet of paper, generate a list of characteristics under each category for each audience. This list will help you later when you read about tone and content.

1. Your classmates

• Demographics ____________________________________________
• Education ____________________________________________
• Prior knowledge ____________________________________________
• Expectations ____________________________________________

2. Your instructor

3. The head of your academic department

4. Now think about your next writing assignment. Identify the purpose (you may use the same purpose listed in Note 6.12 “Exercise 2” ), and then identify the audience. Create a list of characteristics under each category.

My audience: ____________________________________________

Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.

Keep in mind that as your topic shifts in the writing process, your audience may also shift. For more information about the writing process, see Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” .

Also, remember that decisions about style depend on audience, purpose, and content. Identifying your audience’s demographics, education, prior knowledge, and expectations will affect how you write, but purpose and content play an equally important role. The next subsection covers how to select an appropriate tone to match the audience and purpose.

Selecting an Appropriate Tone

Tone identifies a speaker’s attitude toward a subject or another person. You may pick up a person’s tone of voice fairly easily in conversation. A friend who tells you about her weekend may speak excitedly about a fun skiing trip. An instructor who means business may speak in a low, slow voice to emphasize her serious mood. Or, a coworker who needs to let off some steam after a long meeting may crack a sarcastic joke.

Just as speakers transmit emotion through voice, writers can transmit through writing a range of attitudes, from excited and humorous to somber and critical. These emotions create connections among the audience, the author, and the subject, ultimately building a relationship between the audience and the text. To stimulate these connections, writers intimate their attitudes and feelings with useful devices, such as sentence structure, word choice, punctuation, and formal or informal language. Keep in mind that the writer’s attitude should always appropriately match the audience and the purpose.

Read the following paragraph and consider the writer’s tone. How would you describe the writer’s attitude toward wildlife conservation?

Many species of plants and animals are disappearing right before our eyes. If we don’t act fast, it might be too late to save them. Human activities, including pollution, deforestation, hunting, and overpopulation, are devastating the natural environment. Without our help, many species will not survive long enough for our children to see them in the wild. Take the tiger, for example. Today, tigers occupy just 7 percent of their historical range, and many local populations are already extinct. Hunted for their beautiful pelt and other body parts, the tiger population has plummeted from one hundred thousand in 1920 to just a few thousand. Contact your local wildlife conservation society today to find out how you can stop this terrible destruction.

Think about the assignment and purpose you selected in Note 6.12 “Exercise 2” , and the audience you selected in Note 6.16 “Exercise 3” . Now, identify the tone you would use in the assignment.

My tone: ____________________________________________

Choosing Appropriate, Interesting Content

Content refers to all the written substance in a document. After selecting an audience and a purpose, you must choose what information will make it to the page. Content may consist of examples, statistics, facts, anecdotes, testimonies, and observations, but no matter the type, the information must be appropriate and interesting for the audience and purpose. An essay written for third graders that summarizes the legislative process, for example, would have to contain succinct and simple content.

Content is also shaped by tone. When the tone matches the content, the audience will be more engaged, and you will build a stronger relationship with your readers. Consider that audience of third graders. You would choose simple content that the audience will easily understand, and you would express that content through an enthusiastic tone. The same considerations apply to all audiences and purposes.

Match the content in the box to the appropriate audience and purpose. On your own sheet of paper, write the correct letter next to the number.

• Whereas economist Holmes contends that the financial crisis is far from over, the presidential advisor Jones points out that it is vital to catch the first wave of opportunity to increase market share. We can use elements of both experts’ visions. Let me explain how.
• In 2000, foreign money flowed into the United States, contributing to easy credit conditions. People bought larger houses than they could afford, eventually defaulting on their loans as interest rates rose.
• The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, known by most of us as the humungous government bailout, caused mixed reactions. Although supported by many political leaders, the statute provoked outrage among grassroots groups. In their opinion, the government was actually rewarding banks for their appalling behavior.

Audience: An instructor

Purpose: To analyze the reasons behind the 2007 financial crisis

Content: ____________________________________________

Audience: Classmates

Purpose: To summarize the effects of the $700 billion government bailout

Audience: An employer

Purpose: To synthesize two articles on preparing businesses for economic recovery

Using the assignment, purpose, audience, and tone from Note 6.18 “Exercise 4” , generate a list of content ideas. Remember that content consists of examples, statistics, facts, anecdotes, testimonies, and observations.

My content ideas: ____________________________________________

Key Takeaways

• Paragraphs separate ideas into logical, manageable chunks of information.
• The content of each paragraph and document is shaped by purpose, audience, and tone.
• The four common academic purposes are to summarize, to analyze, to synthesize, and to evaluate.
• Identifying the audience’s demographics, education, prior knowledge, and expectations will affect how and what you write.
• Devices such as sentence structure, word choice, punctuation, and formal or informal language communicate tone and create a relationship between the writer and his or her audience.
• Content may consist of examples, statistics, facts, anecdotes, testimonies, and observations. All content must be appropriate and interesting for the audience, purpose and tone.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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5 Steps to Write a Great Analytical Essay

General Education

Do you need to write an analytical essay for school? What sets this kind of essay apart from other types, and what must you include when you write your own analytical essay? In this guide, we break down the process of writing an analytical essay by explaining the key factors your essay needs to have, providing you with an outline to help you structure your essay, and analyzing a complete analytical essay example so you can see what a finished essay looks like.

What Is an Analytical Essay?

Before you begin writing an analytical essay, you must know what this type of essay is and what it includes. Analytical essays analyze something, often (but not always) a piece of writing or a film.

An analytical essay is more than just a synopsis of the issue though; in this type of essay you need to go beyond surface-level analysis and look at what the key arguments/points of this issue are and why. If you’re writing an analytical essay about a piece of writing, you’ll look into how the text was written and why the author chose to write it that way. Instead of summarizing, an analytical essay typically takes a narrower focus and looks at areas such as major themes in the work, how the author constructed and supported their argument, how the essay used literary devices to enhance its messages, etc.

While you certainly want people to agree with what you’ve written, unlike with persuasive and argumentative essays, your main purpose when writing an analytical essay isn’t to try to convert readers to your side of the issue. Therefore, you won’t be using strong persuasive language like you would in those essay types. Rather, your goal is to have enough analysis and examples that the strength of your argument is clear to readers.

Besides typical essay components like an introduction and conclusion, a good analytical essay will include:

• A thesis that states your main argument
• Analysis that relates back to your thesis and supports it
• Examples to support your analysis and allow a more in-depth look at the issue

In the rest of this article, we’ll explain how to include each of these in your analytical essay.

How to Structure Your Analytical Essay

Analytical essays are structured similarly to many other essays you’ve written, with an introduction (including a thesis), several body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Below is an outline you can follow when structuring your essay, and in the next section we go into more detail on how to write an analytical essay.

Introduction

Your introduction will begin with some sort of attention-grabbing sentence to get your audience interested, then you’ll give a few sentences setting up the topic so that readers have some context, and you’ll end with your thesis statement. Your introduction will include:

• Brief background information explaining the issue/text
• Your thesis

Body Paragraphs

Your analytical essay will typically have three or four body paragraphs, each covering a different point of analysis. Begin each body paragraph with a sentence that sets up the main point you’ll be discussing. Then you’ll give some analysis on that point, backing it up with evidence to support your claim. Continue analyzing and giving evidence for your analysis until you’re out of strong points for the topic. At the end of each body paragraph, you may choose to have a transition sentence that sets up what the next paragraph will be about, but this isn’t required. Body paragraphs will include:

• Introductory sentence explaining what you’ll cover in the paragraph (sort of like a mini-thesis)
• Analysis point
• Evidence (either passages from the text or data/facts) that supports the analysis
• (Repeat analysis and evidence until you run out of examples)

You won’t be making any new points in your conclusion; at this point you’re just reiterating key points you’ve already made and wrapping things up. Begin by rephrasing your thesis and summarizing the main points you made in the essay. Someone who reads just your conclusion should be able to come away with a basic idea of what your essay was about and how it was structured. After this, you may choose to make some final concluding thoughts, potentially by connecting your essay topic to larger issues to show why it’s important. A conclusion will include:

• Paraphrase of thesis
• Summary of key points of analysis
• Final concluding thought(s)

5 Steps for Writing an Analytical Essay

Follow these five tips to break down writing an analytical essay into manageable steps. By the end, you’ll have a fully-crafted analytical essay with both in-depth analysis and enough evidence to support your argument. All of these steps use the completed analytical essay in the next section as an example.

#1: Pick a Topic

You may have already had a topic assigned to you, and if that’s the case, you can skip this step. However, if you haven’t, or if the topic you’ve been assigned is broad enough that you still need to narrow it down, then you’ll need to decide on a topic for yourself. Choosing the right topic can mean the difference between an analytical essay that’s easy to research (and gets you a good grade) and one that takes hours just to find a few decent points to analyze

Before you decide on an analytical essay topic, do a bit of research to make sure you have enough examples to support your analysis. If you choose a topic that’s too narrow, you’ll struggle to find enough to write about.

For example, say your teacher assigns you to write an analytical essay about the theme in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath of exposing injustices against migrants. For it to be an analytical essay, you can’t just recount the injustices characters in the book faced; that’s only a summary and doesn’t include analysis. You need to choose a topic that allows you to analyze the theme. One of the best ways to explore a theme is to analyze how the author made his/her argument. One example here is that Steinbeck used literary devices in the intercalary chapters (short chapters that didn’t relate to the plot or contain the main characters of the book) to show what life was like for migrants as a whole during the Dust Bowl.

You could write about how Steinbeck used literary devices throughout the whole book, but, in the essay below, I chose to just focus on the intercalary chapters since they gave me enough examples. Having a narrower focus will nearly always result in a tighter and more convincing essay (and can make compiling examples less overwhelming).

#2: Write a Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement is the most important sentence of your essay; a reader should be able to read just your thesis and understand what the entire essay is about and what you’ll be analyzing. When you begin writing, remember that each sentence in your analytical essay should relate back to your thesis

In the analytical essay example below, the thesis is the final sentence of the first paragraph (the traditional spot for it). The thesis is: “In The Grapes of Wrath’s intercalary chapters, John Steinbeck employs a variety of literary devices and stylistic choices to better expose the injustices committed against migrants in the 1930s.” So what will this essay analyze? How Steinbeck used literary devices in the intercalary chapters to show how rough migrants could have it. Crystal clear.

#3: Do Research to Find Your Main Points

This is where you determine the bulk of your analysis--the information that makes your essay an analytical essay. My preferred method is to list every idea that I can think of, then research each of those and use the three or four strongest ones for your essay. Weaker points may be those that don’t relate back to the thesis, that you don’t have much analysis to discuss, or that you can’t find good examples for. A good rule of thumb is to have one body paragraph per main point

This essay has four main points, each of which analyzes a different literary device Steinbeck uses to better illustrate how difficult life was for migrants during the Dust Bowl. The four literary devices and their impact on the book are:

• Lack of individual names in intercalary chapters to illustrate the scope of the problem
• Parallels to the Bible to induce sympathy for the migrants
• Non-showy, often grammatically-incorrect language so the migrants are more realistic and relatable to readers
• Nature-related metaphors to affect the mood of the writing and reflect the plight of the migrants

#4: Find Excerpts or Evidence to Support Your Analysis

Now that you have your main points, you need to back them up. If you’re writing a paper about a text or film, use passages/clips from it as your main source of evidence. If you’re writing about something else, your evidence can come from a variety of sources, such as surveys, experiments, quotes from knowledgeable sources etc. Any evidence that would work for a regular research paper works here.

In this example, I quoted multiple passages from The Grapes of Wrath  in each paragraph to support my argument. You should be able to back up every claim you make with evidence in order to have a strong essay.

#5: Put It All Together

Now it's time to begin writing your essay, if you haven’t already. Create an introductory paragraph that ends with the thesis, make a body paragraph for each of your main points, including both analysis and evidence to back up your claims, and wrap it all up with a conclusion that recaps your thesis and main points and potentially explains the big picture importance of the topic.

Analytical Essay Example + Analysis

So that you can see for yourself what a completed analytical essay looks like, here’s an essay I wrote back in my high school days. It’s followed by analysis of how I structured my essay, what its strengths are, and how it could be improved.

One way Steinbeck illustrates the connections all migrant people possessed and the struggles they faced is by refraining from using specific titles and names in his intercalary chapters. While The Grapes of Wrath focuses on the Joad family, the intercalary chapters show that all migrants share the same struggles and triumphs as the Joads. No individual names are used in these chapters; instead the people are referred to as part of a group. Steinbeck writes, “Frantic men pounded on the doors of the doctors; and the doctors were busy.  And sad men left word at country stores for the coroner to send a car,” (555). By using generic terms, Steinbeck shows how the migrants are all linked because they have gone through the same experiences. The grievances committed against one family were committed against thousands of other families; the abuse extends far beyond what the Joads experienced. The Grapes of Wrath frequently refers to the importance of coming together; how, when people connect with others their power and influence multiplies immensely. Throughout the novel, the goal of the migrants, the key to their triumph, has been to unite. While their plans are repeatedly frustrated by the government and police, Steinbeck’s intercalary chapters provide a way for the migrants to relate to one another because they have encountered the same experiences. Hundreds of thousands of migrants fled to the promised land of California, but Steinbeck was aware that numbers alone were impersonal and lacked the passion he desired to spread. Steinbeck created the intercalary chapters to show the massive numbers of people suffering, and he created the Joad family to evoke compassion from readers.  Because readers come to sympathize with the Joads, they become more sensitive to the struggles of migrants in general. However, John Steinbeck frequently made clear that the Joads were not an isolated incident; they were not unique. Their struggles and triumphs were part of something greater. Refraining from specific names in his intercalary chapters allows Steinbeck to show the vastness of the atrocities committed against migrants.

Steinbeck also creates significant parallels to the Bible in his intercalary chapters in order to enhance his writing and characters. By using simple sentences and stylized writing, Steinbeck evokes Biblical passages. The migrants despair, “No work till spring. No work,” (556).  Short, direct sentences help to better convey the desperateness of the migrants’ situation. Throughout his novel, John Steinbeck makes connections to the Bible through his characters and storyline. Jim Casy’s allusions to Christ and the cycle of drought and flooding are clear biblical references.  By choosing to relate The Grapes of Wrath to the Bible, Steinbeck’s characters become greater than themselves. Starving migrants become more than destitute vagrants; they are now the chosen people escaping to the promised land. When a forgotten man dies alone and unnoticed, it becomes a tragedy. Steinbeck writes, “If [the migrants] were shot at, they did not run, but splashed sullenly away; and if they were hit, they sank tiredly in the mud,” (556). Injustices committed against the migrants become greater because they are seen as children of God through Steinbeck’s choice of language. Referencing the Bible strengthens Steinbeck’s novel and purpose: to create understanding for the dispossessed.  It is easy for people to feel disdain for shabby vagabonds, but connecting them to such a fundamental aspect of Christianity induces sympathy from readers who might have otherwise disregarded the migrants as so many other people did.

The simple, uneducated dialogue Steinbeck employs also helps to create a more honest and meaningful representation of the migrants, and it makes the migrants more relatable to readers. Steinbeck chooses to accurately represent the language of the migrants in order to more clearly illustrate their lives and make them seem more like real paper than just characters in a book. The migrants lament, “They ain’t gonna be no kinda work for three months,” (555). There are multiple grammatical errors in that single sentence, but it vividly conveys the despair the migrants felt better than a technically perfect sentence would. The Grapes of Wrath is intended to show the severe difficulties facing the migrants so Steinbeck employs a clear, pragmatic style of writing.  Steinbeck shows the harsh, truthful realities of the migrants’ lives and he would be hypocritical if he chose to give the migrants a more refined voice and not portray them with all their shortcomings. The depiction of the migrants as imperfect through their language also makes them easier to relate to. Steinbeck’s primary audience was the middle class, the less affluent of society. Repeatedly in The Grapes of Wrath , the wealthy make it obvious that they scorn the plight of the migrants. The wealthy, not bad luck or natural disasters, were the prominent cause of the suffering of migrant families such as the Joads. Thus, Steinbeck turns to the less prosperous for support in his novel. When referring to the superior living conditions barnyard animals have, the migrants remark, “Them’s horses-we’re men,” (556).  The perfect simplicity of this quote expresses the absurdness of the migrants’ situation better than any flowery expression could.

In The Grapes of Wrath , John Steinbeck uses metaphors, particularly about nature, in order to illustrate the mood and the overall plight of migrants. Throughout most of the book, the land is described as dusty, barren, and dead. Towards the end, however; floods come and the landscape begins to change. At the end of chapter twenty-nine, Steinbeck describes a hill after the floods saying, “Tiny points of grass came through the earth, and in a few days the hills were pale green with the beginning year,” (556). This description offers a stark contrast from the earlier passages which were filled with despair and destruction. Steinbeck’s tone from the beginning of the chapter changes drastically. Early in the chapter, Steinbeck had used heavy imagery in order to convey the destruction caused by the rain, “The streams and the little rivers edged up to the bank sides and worked at willows and tree roots, bent the willows deep in the current, cut out the roots of cottonwoods and brought down the trees,” (553). However, at the end of the chapter the rain has caused new life to grow in California. The new grass becomes a metaphor representing hope. When the migrants are at a loss over how they will survive the winter, the grass offers reassurance. The story of the migrants in the intercalary chapters parallels that of the Joads. At the end of the novel, the family is breaking apart and has been forced to flee their home. However, both the book and final intercalary chapter end on a hopeful note after so much suffering has occurred. The grass metaphor strengthens Steinbeck’s message because it offers a tangible example of hope. Through his language Steinbeck’s themes become apparent at the end of the novel. Steinbeck affirms that persistence, even when problems appear insurmountable, leads to success. These metaphors help to strengthen Steinbeck’s themes in The Grapes of Wrath because they provide a more memorable way to recall important messages.

John Steinbeck’s language choices help to intensify his writing in his intercalary chapters and allow him to more clearly show how difficult life for migrants could be. Refraining from using specific names and terms allows Steinbeck to show that many thousands of migrants suffered through the same wrongs. Imitating the style of the Bible strengthens Steinbeck’s characters and connects them to the Bible, perhaps the most famous book in history. When Steinbeck writes in the imperfect dialogue of the migrants, he creates a more accurate portrayal and makes the migrants easier to relate to for a less affluent audience. Metaphors, particularly relating to nature, strengthen the themes in The Grapes of Wrath by enhancing the mood Steinbeck wants readers to feel at different points in the book. Overall, the intercalary chapters that Steinbeck includes improve his novel by making it more memorable and reinforcing the themes Steinbeck embraces throughout the novel. Exemplary stylistic devices further persuade readers of John Steinbeck’s personal beliefs. Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath to bring to light cruelties against migrants, and by using literary devices effectively, he continuously reminds readers of his purpose. Steinbeck’s impressive language choices in his intercalary chapters advance the entire novel and help to create a classic work of literature that people still are able to relate to today. 

This essay sticks pretty closely to the standard analytical essay outline. It starts with an introduction, where I chose to use a quote to start off the essay. (This became my favorite way to start essays in high school because, if I wasn’t sure what to say, I could outsource the work and find a quote that related to what I’d be writing about.) The quote in this essay doesn’t relate to the themes I’m discussing quite as much as it could, but it’s still a slightly different way to start an essay and can intrigue readers. I then give a bit of background on The Grapes of Wrath and its themes before ending the intro paragraph with my thesis: that Steinbeck used literary devices in intercalary chapters to show how rough migrants had it.

Each of my four body paragraphs is formatted in roughly the same way: an intro sentence that explains what I’ll be discussing, analysis of that main point, and at least two quotes from the book as evidence.

My conclusion restates my thesis, summarizes each of four points I discussed in my body paragraphs, and ends the essay by briefly discussing how Steinbeck’s writing helped introduce a world of readers to the injustices migrants experienced during the dust bowl.

What does this analytical essay example do well? For starters, it contains everything that a strong analytical essay should, and it makes that easy to find. The thesis clearly lays out what the essay will be about, the first sentence of each of the body paragraph introduces the topic it’ll cover, and the conclusion neatly recaps all the main points. Within each of the body paragraphs, there’s analysis along with multiple excerpts from the book in order to add legitimacy to my points.

Additionally, the essay does a good job of taking an in-depth look at the issue introduced in the thesis. Four ways Steinbeck used literary devices are discussed, and for each of the examples are given and analysis is provided so readers can understand why Steinbeck included those devices and how they helped shaped how readers viewed migrants and their plight.

Where could this essay be improved? I believe the weakest body paragraph is the third one, the one that discusses how Steinbeck used plain, grammatically incorrect language to both accurately depict the migrants and make them more relatable to readers. The paragraph tries to touch on both of those reasons and ends up being somewhat unfocused as a result. It would have been better for it to focus on just one of those reasons (likely how it made the migrants more relatable) in order to be clearer and more effective. It’s a good example of how adding more ideas to an essay often doesn’t make it better if they don’t work with the rest of what you’re writing. This essay also could explain the excerpts that are included more and how they relate to the points being made. Sometimes they’re just dropped in the essay with the expectation that the readers will make the connection between the example and the analysis. This is perhaps especially true in the second body paragraph, the one that discusses similarities to Biblical passages. Additional analysis of the quotes would have strengthened it.

Summary: How to Write an Analytical Essay

What is an analytical essay? A critical analytical essay analyzes a topic, often a text or film. The analysis paper uses evidence to support the argument, such as excerpts from the piece of writing. All analytical papers include a thesis, analysis of the topic, and evidence to support that analysis.

When developing an analytical essay outline and writing your essay, follow these five steps:

Reading analytical essay examples can also give you a better sense of how to structure your essay and what to include in it.

What's Next?

Learning about different writing styles in school? There are four main writing styles, and it's important to understand each of them. Learn about them in our guide to writing styles , complete with examples.

Writing a research paper for school but not sure what to write about? Our guide to research paper topics has over 100 topics in ten categories so you can be sure to find the perfect topic for you.

Literary devices can both be used to enhance your writing and communication. Check out this list of 31 literary devices to learn more !

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Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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How-To-Guide

How to Do an Audience Analysis

Home > How to Guides > How to Do an Audience Analysis

Introduction

An audience analysis is a process used to identify and understand the priority and influencing audiences for a SBCC strategy. The priority and influencing audiences are those people whose behavior must change in order to improve the health situation. A complete audience analysis looks at:

• Socio-demographic characteristics such as sex, age, language and religion.
• Geographic characteristics like where the audience lives and how that might impact behavior.
• Psychographic characteristics such as needs, hopes, concerns and aspirations.
• Audience thoughts, beliefs, knowledge and current actions related to the health or social issue.
• Barriers and facilitators that prevent or encourage audience members to adopt the desired behavior change.
• Gender and how it impacts audience members’ behavior and ability to change.
• Effective communication channels for reaching the audience.

Why Conduct an Audience Analysis?

An audience analysis informs the design of materials, messages, media selection and activities of a SBCC strategy. It establishes a clear, detailed and realistic picture of the audience. As a result, messages and activities are more likely to resonate with the audience and lead to the desired change in behaviors.

Who Should Conduct an Audience Analysis?

A small, focused team should conduct the audience analysis . Members should include communication staff, health/social service staff and, when available, research staff.

Stakeholders should also be involved throughout the process. Consider effective ways to engage stakeholders to gain feedback and input, including: in-depth interviews , focus group discussions , community dialogue, small group meetings, taskforce engagement and participatory stakeholder workshops .

When Should Audience Analysis Be Conducted?

An audience analysis should be conducted at the beginning of a program or project, in conjunction with a situation analysis and program analysis . The team should start thinking about the audience during the desk review and fill in any gaps during the stakeholder workshop . It is part of the Inquiry phase of the P Process.

Estimated Time Needed

Completing an audience analysis can take up to three to four weeks. When estimating time, consider the existing audience-related data, what gaps need to be filled and whether additional stakeholder or audience input is needed. Allow for additional time if formative research is needed to fill in any gaps that may exist in the literature.

Learning Objectives

After completing the activities in the audience analysis guide, the team will:

• Determine the priority audience.
• Determine the influencing audience(s).
• Describe the priority and influencing audience(s).
• Develop an audience profile for each priority and influencing audience(s).

Prerequisites

• Situation Analysis

Step 1: Identify Potential Audience(s)

To address the problem statement and achieve the vision decided upon during the situation analysis , brainstorm and list all potential audiences that are affected by or have control over the health or social problem. For example, if the problem is high unmet need for family planning , potential audiences may be:

Step 2: Select the Priority Audience

An effective SBCC strategy must focus on the most important audience. The priority audience is not always the most affected audience, but is the group of people whose behavior must change in order to improve the health situation. The number of priority audiences depends mainly on the number of audiences whose practice of the behavior will significantly impact the problem. For example, priority audiences may be:

To identify the priority audience(s), keep in mind the vision and health or social problem. Then consider:

• Who is most affected
• How many people are in the audience
• How important it is that the audience change their behavior
• How likely it is that the audience will change their behavior
• Who controls the behavior or the resources required for a behavior change

Step 3: Identify Priority Audience Characteristics

Identify the socio-demographic , geographic and psychographic characteristics of each priority audience . Include their communication preferences and other opportunities to reach them.

Organize priority audience information in a table ( see Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template under templates).

Step 4: Identify Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices

Understand what the priority audience knows, thinks, feels and does about the problem in order to determine the audiences’ stage of behavior change . This allows the program to tailor messages and activities based on the audience’s knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.

There are a number of ideational factors that commonly influence individual behavior and should be considered when examining the audience’s knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.

The situation analysis , stakeholder workshop and any additional quantitative or qualitative research will indicate what the priority audience currently does in reference to the problem and what the audience knows, thinks and feels about the problem or desired behavior. Keeping in mind the ideational factors , examine that research to understand each priority audience . Ask questions such as:

• What does the priority audience already know (knowledge) about the problem?
• How does the priority audience feel about the problem (attitude)?
• How does the priority audience see their role with respect to the problem (self-image)?
• Does the priority audience feel at risk of having the problem? How at risk do they feel (risk perception)?
• What are the community’s beliefs and attitudes toward the health problem (social norms)?
• How capable does the priority audience feel about being able to take action to address the problem (self-efficacy)?
• What emotional reaction does the priority audience have towards the health problem (emotions)?
• What level of support does the priority audience believe they would receive from family members or the community (social support and influence)?
• How capable does the priority audience feel about discussing how to reduce the problem (personal advocacy)?

Add this information to the table ( see Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template under templates).

Step 5: Identify Barriers and Facilitators

It is crucial to know what prevents or encourages the priority audience to practice the desired behavior. Identify barriers and facilitators of change in the literature and list them in the table ( see Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template under templates).If the desk review does not adequately identify behavioral factors, conduct additional qualitative research (interviews, focus groups) with members of the priority audience. Some important barriers to consider include:

• Habit: People are comfortable doing things the same way they have always done them.
• Fear: People expect change to bring negative consequences.
• Negative experience: Some audiences may have had a bad experience, such as with the health care system, and thus may be cynical or resistant to change.

If the desired behavior requires adopting/utilizing products or services, consider issues of availability, accessibility, affordability and acceptability.

Step 6: Consider Audience Segmentation

Audience segmentation is the process of dividing the priority audience into sub groups according to at least one similar characteristic that will affect the success of the SBCC effort. Look at the selected priority audience and decide if it is similar enough that it can be effectively reached by the same set of channels , messages and interventions . Ask the following questions about the priority audience to decide if segmentation is necessary:

• Are any audience members particularly difficult to reach, requiring a different set of channels?
• Do any audience members have distinct views or concerns about the problem?
• Do any audience members require a different message to reach them effectively?
• Are any audience members at greater risk?

If yes, the audience may need to be segmented further. See the audience segmentation guide for more information on how to identify and prioritize audiences so that messages and interventions can be most effectively targeted.

Some urban women of reproductive age may have different concerns or views about family planning. One group might be afraid of side effects while another group does not use family planning because they do not know where family planning services are available. These groups would require different messages and interventions and should be segmented if resources allow.

Step 7: Identify Key Influencers

Based on the priority or segmented audience, identify the key influencers. Search the situation analysis, stakeholder workshop and any qualitative research findings for indications of who strongly influences the priority audience ’s behavior ( see Audience Focused Literature Review Chart Template under templates). Influencers can be individuals or groups. Their different roles – as friends, family, leaders, teachers, health providers and of course, the media – often determine their level of influence. Consider the following factors to help identify influencing audiences :

• Who has the most impact on the priority audience’s health-related behavior and what is their relationship to the priority audience?
• Who makes or shapes the priority audience’s decisions in the problem area?
• Who influences the priority audience’s behavior positively and who influences it negatively?

Step 8: Organize Influencing Audience Information

For each influencing audience identified, search the literature to identify information about them and their relationship to the priority audience . Look for:

• How strongly the group influences the priority audience
• What behaviors they encourage the priority audience to practice
• Why they would encourage or discourage the desired behavior
• How to reach them

Organize information on influencing audiences in another table for later use in the SBCC strategy ( see Influencing Audiences Template under templates ):

Step 9: Develop Audience Profiles

Review the notes about each audience and try to tell the story of that person. Audience profiles bring audience segments to life by telling the story of an imagined individual from the audience.

The audience profile consists of a paragraph with details on current behaviors, motivation, emotions, values and attitudes , as well as information such as age, income level, religion, sex and where they live . The profile should reflect the primary barriers the audience faces in adopting the desired behavior. Include a name and photo to help the creative team visualize who the person is. Answers to the following questions can lead to insightful profiles that help the team understand and reach audiences more effectively:

The audience profiles will feed directly into the creative brief process and will be an integral part of the SBCC strategy. See the Samples section for an example of an audience profile.

Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template

Audience-Focused Literature Review Template

Influencing Audience Template

Sample Audience Profile

Tips & Recommendations

• Talk to audience members. Do not rely solely on the project team’s beliefs or what program staff and health workers say or assume about the audiences.
• Put yourself in the audience’s shoes. To truly understand what audiences know, think and feel, set aside assumptions and preconceived notions.
• Work in teams. The collaboration among team members (four or five people recommended) will provide richer and deeper insights into the issues. If possible, include people who have direct experience working or living in the community.
• Find other ways to gather information. It is important to recognize that some documents may have information gaps that will require additional inquiries (formative research) to fully understand the potential audience. Interviews with local experts (e.g. medical and public health staff) can help explain the issue and identify those most at risk or affected by it.
• Incorporate the communication channels prioritized during the stakeholder workshop. Also consider other opportunities to reach audiences, such as places (e.g., schools, clinics) and events (e.g., health fairs, community events). SBCC strategies can take advantage of such opportunities to connect with audience members about the topic.
• The priority audience’s perception about how the community views an issue may differ from how the community actually views the issue. The perception of what the family/community thinks often will be the deciding factor when it comes to taking a health action. This can prevent the individual from taking the best action. Addressing the misperceptions with your program or campaign could lead to a more successful behavior change intervention than one that does not address misperceptions.
• Audience profiles should represent the experience of real people. This will help the program team better understand the audiences they are trying to reach and ensure that audience members see themselves in the messages developed for them.
• No two audience profiles should look the same; the best profiles use qualitative research as a source. Profiles are living documents that should be updated when new information becomes available.

Lessons Learned

• Designing messages and activities with shared characteristics in mind increases the likelihood of audience members identifying with the issue and feeling able to address it.

Glossary & Concepts

• Priority audience refers to a group of people whose behavior must change in order to improve the health situation. It is the most important group to address because they have the power to make changes the SBCC campaign calls for. Sometimes this is also referred to as the intended audience.
• An influencing audience is made up of those people who have the most significant and direct influence (positive or negative) over the priority audience. The influencing audience can exist at different levels: at the family level, community level (e.g. peers, relatives, teachers, community or faith-based leaders) or national or regional level (e.g. policy makers, media personnel, government leaders).
• Demographic information is statistical data (e.g. age, sex, education level, income level, geographic location) relating to a population and specific sub-groups of that population.
• Psychographics are the attributes that describe personality, attitudes, beliefs, values, emotions and opinions. Psychographic characteristics or factors relate to the psychology or behavior of the audience.
• Ideation refers to how new ways of thinking (or new behaviors) are diffused through a community by means of communication and social interaction among individuals and groups. Behavior is influenced by multiple social and psychological factors, as well as skills and environmental conditions that facilitate behavior.
• Ideational factors are grouped into three categories: cognitive, emotional and social. Cognitive factors address an individual’s beliefs, values and attitudes (such as risk perceptions), as well as how an individual perceives what others think should be done (subjective norms), what the individual thinks others are actually doing (social norms) and how the individual thinks about him/herself (self-image). Emotional factors include how an individual feels about the new behavior (positive or negative) as well as how confident a person feels that they can perform the behavior (self-efficacy). Social factors consist of interpersonal interactions (such as support or pressure from friends) that convince someone to behave in a certain way, as well as the effect on an individual’s behavior from trying to persuade others to adopt the behavior as well (personal advocacy).
• Gende r refers to the socially and culturally constructed roles and responsibilities deemed appropriate for men and women. Such constructions influence how males and females behave. In many cases, the way a community defines gender roles and expectations disadvantages women and girls. For example, if community norms dictate that boys should eat meat and vegetables while girls get rice and porridge, mothers will have difficulty ensuring that girls get enough of the right foods to be healthy.
• Barriers to change prevent or make it difficult to adopt a behavior. Barriers come in many forms – emotional, societal, structural, educational, familial, etc.
• Facilitators of change make it easier to adopt a behavior. As with barriers, they can take many forms.

Resources and References

A Field Guide to Designing a Health Communication Strategy

Conducting a Social Marketing Campaign

Leadership in Strategic Communication: Making a Difference in Infectious Disease and Reproductive Health

The Transtheoretical Model

Theories of Behavior Change

• O’Sullivan, G.A., Yonkler, J.A., Morgan, W., and Merritt, A.P. A Field Guide to Designing a Health Communication Strategy , Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs, March 2003
• UNICEF (2008). Writing a Communication Strategy for Development Programmes: A Guideline for Programme Managers and Communication Officers .

Banner Photo: © 2013 Jennifer Applegate, Courtesy of Photoshare

ABOUT HOW TO GUIDES

SBC How-to Guides are short guides that provide step-by-step instructions on how to perform core social and behavior change tasks. From formative research through monitoring and evaluation, these guides cover each step of the SBC process, offer useful hints, and include important resources and references.

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How to Write an Analysis Essay: The Ultimate Study Guide

Have an analytical essay to write? We get it. We’ve been there. Fortunately, we are here for you, with some insights into writing a successful analytical paper. Keep reading this article.

Analytical Essay Definition

How to write an analytical essay: step by step, analysis essay outline, analytical essay topic.

An analytical essay is a writing assignment. Your goal here is to introduce and discuss a claim as well as to deliver a detailed review of a given topic.

You can write analysis essays on topics from different fields. These include such topics as politics, economics, art, philosophy, music, literature, etc. Analytical assignments are a substantial part of any academic work. That is why university and college students often have to compose such papers. An outstanding analytical essay intends to explain and contextualize any topic—both the author and the reader benefit from it. In order to get a clearer picture of what this type of work should look like, check out some examples in our free essays collection.

Types of Analytical Essay

There are different types of analytical essays. It is important to find out what kind of essay you will write to use the correct structure.

📌 Cause and effect analytical essay. Also known as reason and result essay, this type of work discusses the purpose of something, which then enables us to analyze it while studying its effect on other things. 📌 Comparison and contrast analysis. This essay type examines two subjects to highlight their subtle similarities or differences through contrasting, comparison, or both processes at once. 📌 Classification. This type provides classification of things with common similarities into groups or categories to better learn their nature and carry out the analysis. 📌 Process essay. Such works talk about the way of doing something in order to give some sort of guidance or directions to readers. 📌 Definition. These essays comprise research to define an idea, concept, or term and provide evidence to support it. They also contain explanation through examples.

We use all these types of analytical essays while writing different kinds of analyses. The most common variants of analysis are literary analysis, painting analysis, and analysis of speech.

Find their detailed descriptions down below!

What is a Literary Analysis

While writing a literary analysis essay, you don’t always have to study a work of literature in its entirety. Sometimes you need to describe only a particular character or one aspect of the work. When studying various literary work elements, you are likely to understand the whole piece better. This process makes literary analysis one of the most exciting types of papers.

There are two main ways of composing the work – from the style perspective and from the literature piece elements perspective.

If you want to concentrate on the style , you can consider following criteria:

• Structure and organization
• Point of view
• Word choice
• Figurative language

In case of choosing to look into the elements of the work, you need to describe these aspects:

It is also possible to analyze all these elements considering different analytical essays: cause and effect, comparison and contrast, classification, process, and definition papers.

It would be a mistake to think that an analysis of literary work is just a summary of a piece of writing. On the contrary, it is rather a debate about the work that conveys a writer’s interpretation of the work.

How to Write Painting Analysis

Analyzing a painting is never easy. If you aren’t sure where to start, remember that you don’t need to be a painter or an expert in the field. Start your writing by answering some of these questions:

🤔 When was the painting made? 🤔 How big/small is it? 🤔 What kind of painting is it? It could be a portrait, a landscape, or still life. 🤔 How does the artist use colors and shapes? 🤔 What is your idea of the mood of the picture? 🤔 Is there a story behind the image? 🤔 Do you know who the artist is? 🤔 Did the artist use any symbols in the painting? 🤔 How would you describe the brushwork? Is the paint thick or thin?

Some more tips on how to analyze a work of art :

• “Description of a painting” does not mean “analysis of a painting,” so do not dive into too much detail. Going beyond stating the obvious, a student can demonstrate a more profound understanding of the piece of art.
• Try to avoid such judgmental expressions as “I like this” or “I don’t like this.” Remember to support your opinion with evidence or justification.
• Talk about several visual elements. Make sure you discuss different visual aspects of the artwork. Do not limit your analysis to talking only about colors or patterns. Try to show the painting from different perspectives.

Speech Analysis: Overview

While writing a speech analysis, you need to answer two questions. The first question you need to discuss here is WHAT the speaker says. Analyze their speech according to the standard procedure of text analysis, conversation analysis, and dialogue analysis.

The second important question is HOW the speaker expresses the ideas. Sometimes you need to analyze it to read between the lines and get the speaker’s view better. Important messages in speeches are often sent through appearance and behavior.

When analyzing a speech, try to consider the following questions :

🔎 Who is giving a speech? 🔎 What does the speaker look like? 🔎 How are they dressed? 🔎 What is the speaker’s behavior? 🔎 Does the speaker use gestures? 🔎 What is their voice like?

Some more tips on how to analyze a speech:

• A good piece of advice is to analyze the speaker and the audience they are talking to. You can describe their background and education, the atmosphere of the meeting, the general mood of the audience.
• It is also possible to talk about the meeting itself. Maybe it is a conference or a TV show, a workshop or a big plenary. All these details are crucial because they influence the speaker directly.

Writing an analytical essay can be tricky. You need to consider many aspects if you want your work to sound competent. We’ve prepared a list of 5 key steps that will help you create the best analytical essay possible.

5 Key Steps to a Perfect Analytical Essay

1. pick a good topic.

Before talking about any topic, it is helpful to study it from the ground up. When you become a real expert on the subject, you realize that analysis is relatively simple.

Check websites of trustworthy institutions to see if they have works on similar issues, or just google published papers on related topics. They can help you structure your work better.

They can also give you inspiration about the ideas you might discuss in your work.

2. Produce an analytical thesis statement

A thesis statement is the foundation of your work. It can be expressed in one sentence and supported by the most important arguments.

A working thesis statement gives the readers a general idea of the structure of your paper. It also provides them with the central point of your work and the main arguments supporting the idea. Aside from that, it declares a position about the subject that needs discussing and proving.

Here is an example of a good thesis statement:

“Worldwide nature preserving measures should concentrate on saving endangered species. It would allow many rare kinds of animals to live and breed in a safe environment.”

3. Do your research

Before writing an essay, it is vital to study the topic thoroughly. Do not skip this step, as it is essential to demonstrate that you have learned the topic and are ready to present your results, supported by arguments. So, get ready! Read relevant studies, do experiments, collect statistics – everything counts!

4. Set a realistic goal

When choosing a goal for your research, stay realistic. Try to make your goal as precise as possible. In this case, it will be easy for you to achieve your aim and to demonstrate your results at their best. It is also easier to find arguments for and against your thesis statement if your goal is precise and narrow.

5. Create an analysis essay outline

Any written assignment needs thorough planning, and analytical essays need it too. Before you write, make a well-structured outline of your work, including every paragraph’s essential points.

An analysis essay consists of an introduction, several main body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Let’s investigate this part in more detail.

There are many ways to structure an analytical assignment. Which format is best depending on the type of essay and the main goals of the writing task? We have prepared three different kinds of outlines for you.

The first type of structure is perfect when you need to state the central position in the text and defend it. Concentrate on the position you take, but don’t forget to mention alternative perspectives as well. In this type of work, you do not need to explain why the alternative ways are wrong. Show the readers that they exist.

The second type is good for when you not only want to defend your position. You also aim to explain why the other perspectives are wrong. In this case, you need to think carefully about arguments for your position. You will also need arguments against the different opinions.

And the third type is a perfect fit if you aim to demonstrate a wide range of several issues.For each of them, you have the central position and defending arguments. This type of essay tends to be the longest, as it covers several issues. It also includes alternative positions on all the problems. The thing is – there is no need to prove the alternative ideas wrong. You should only defend your main statement.

Analytical Essay Introduction: Examples

The purpose of the introduction of your essay is to make the readers focus. To keep the attention, you need to include a hook in the introduction . The hook can look like a rhetorical or provocative question, a quotation, or a bold statement.

A good intro also mentions the issue you will talk about. Besides, it states the position you are taking and background information on the topic. It is usually situated at the end of the introductory paragraph.

Some examples of good introductions:

✅ “The symbolism in JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey” keeps the feeling of melancholia and uncertainty throughout the entire novel.” ✅ “Although there are many reasons for the 2nd World War, it is nationalism that formed hatred and provoked the War’s start.” ✅ “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal.” Animal Farm is full of ironic and provocative phrases, which invite the reader to continue exploring the story. ✅ In Animal Farm, the author uses irony types to show totalitarianism and to manifest its inability to make every member of society equal.

Analysis Essay Body: Paragraph Format + Examples

The main body is a part of an essay with the aim to show readers the main idea development. Here, you need to add some evidence to support your thesis. Usually, there are three paragraphs. It depends on how broad the thesis statement is. Writers typically look for the evidence in different resources. It can be in the form of a summary, a quotation, or a paraphrase.

Here is an example of how to start a body paragraph:

“In the article, the author describes a particular scenario of doing house chores with her husband. She is paving the way for the following discussion of…”

Remember to include topic sentences in each paragraph! The main idea of the paragraph should be there. It also should be connected to your work’s central position. It is crucially important to support every claim in the thesis statement with proof. Try to include arguments supported by research and strong evidence. That is the reason to have a narrow thesis statement. The broader your thesis is – the more paragraphs the main body will contain.

For example:

“At first look, the plot of the story seems direct. It tells a story of… The central question of the story is looking for meaning in life. For instance: “Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump…”. This passage shows the readers the simple structure of …”

❓ How to Write an Analysis Essay?

To write an analysis essay, you need to study your topic thoroughly and conduct a research. After that, it is a good idea to think about the structure of your essay. Decide on the position, that you are going to defend. Besides, think about the opposite arguments and the evidence for the support of your central point.

❓ How to Write an Analytical Thesis?

The Thesis Statement is the root of your assignment. It needs to be further discussed and supported by evidence while writing. Before writing the main body and discussing quotes, make sure that your statement is clear and debatable. Do not forget to make your thesis statement persuasive. In this case, the audience will see your perspective and believe what you are saying.

❓ What Are the Characteristics of an Effective Introduction?

The goal of the introduction of your essay is to keep the readers’ focus. To bring this attention to your topic, you need to start with a hook. The hook can be in the form of a rhetorical or provocative question, a quotation, or a bold statement. A good introduction also includes the question you will discuss. Apart from that, it states the position you are taking and background information on the topic. It is usually placed at the end of the introductory paragraph.

❓ Can I Use a Quote in My Conclusion?

It is better to use a quotation in the introduction or the essay body. But if the quote can logically finish your analysis, then use it! Just make sure that your quotation does not include any new ideas or information. The reason is that the aim of the conclusion is to restate your thesis statement and your topic.

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Types of audiences

One of the first things to do when you analyze and audience is to identify its type (or types—it’s rarely just one type). The common division of audiences into categories is as follows:

• Experts: These are the people who know the business or organization (and possibly the theory and the product) inside and out. They designed it, they tested it, they know everything about it. Often, they have advanced degrees and operate in academic settings or in research and development areas of the government and technology worlds.
• Technicians: These are the people who build, operate, maintain, and repair the items that the experts design and theorize about. Theirs is a highly technical knowledge as well, but of a more practical nature.
• Executives: These are the people who make business, economic, administrative, legal, governmental, political decisions about the products of the experts and technicians. Executives are likely to have as little technical knowledge about the subject as nonspecialists. For many of you, this will be the primary audience for your report.
• Nonspecialists: These readers have the least technical knowledge of all. They want to use the new product to accomplish their tasks; they want to understand the new power technology enough to know whether to vote for or against it in the upcoming bond election. Or, they may just be curious about a specific technical matter and want to learn about it—but for no specific, practical reason. Chances are, these readers will represent your secondary audience.

Audience analysis

It’s important to determine which of the four categories just discussed represent your potential audience(s), but that’s not the end of it. Audiences, regardless of category, must also be analyzed in terms of characteristics such as the following:

• Background—knowledge, experience, training: One of your most important concerns is just how much knowledge, experience, or training you can expect in your readers. If you expect some of your readers to lack certain background, do you automatically supply it in your document? Consider an example: imagine you are writing a guide to using a software product that runs under Microsoft Windows. How much can you expect your readers to know about Windows? If some are likely to know little about Windows, should you provide that information? If you say no, then you run the risk of customers getting frustrated with your product. If you say yes to adding background information on Windows, you increase your work effort and add to the page count of the document (and thus to the cost). Obviously, there’s no easy answer to this question—part of the answer may involve just how small a segment of the audience needs that background information.
• Needs and interests: To plan your document, you need to know what your audience is going to expect from that document. Imagine how readers will want to use your document; what they will demand from it. For example, imagine you are writing a manual on how to use a new smartphone—what are your readers going to expect to find in it? Imagine you are under contract to write a background report on global warming for a national real estate association—what do readers want to read about; and, equally important, what do they not want to read about?
• Other demographic characteristics: And of course there are many other characteristics about your readers that might have an influence on how you should design and write your document—for example, age groups, type of residence, area of residence, gender, political preferences, and so on.

Audience analysis can get complicated by at least two other factors: mixed audience types for one document, wide variability within audience, and unknown audiences.

• More than one audience: You are likely to find that your report is for more than one audience. For example, it may be seen by technical people (experts and technicians) and administrative people (executives). What should you do in this case? You can either write all the sections so that all the audiences of your document can understand them. Or you can write each section strictly for the audience that would be interested in it, then use headings and section introductions to alert your audience about where to find relevant information in your report.
• Wide variability in an audience: You may realize that, although you have an audience that fits into only one category, its background varies widely. This is a tough one—if you write to the lowest common denominator of reader, you are likely to end up with a cumbersome, tedious book-like report that will turn off the majority of readers. However, if you don’t write to that lowest level, you lose that segment of your readers. What should you do? Most writers go for the majority of readers and sacrifice that minority that needs more help. Others put the supplemental information in appendixes or insert cross-references to beginners’ books.

Adapting your writing to meet your audience’s needs

Once you’ve analyzed your audience, how do you use this information? How do you keep from writing something that may potentially still be incomprehensible or useless to your readers? Draft your document with your audience’s needs in mind, but remember that writing can be refined over many drafts. With each subsequent draft, think more carefully about your readers, and revise and edit your document so that you make technical information more understandable for nonspecialist audiences. The lists below are some of the ways you can adapt your writing to your audience’s needs.

The following “controls” have mostly to do with making technical information more understandable for nonspecialist audiences and is information you will refine as you begin to put your final report together. However, it is a good idea to be aware of your audience’s needs even in the early stages of your report drafting.

Provide the right information

Add information readers need to understand your document. Check to see whether certain key information is missing—for example, a critical series of steps from a set of instructions; important background that helps beginners understand the main discussion; definition of key terms.

Omit information your readers do not need. Unnecessary information can also confuse and frustrate readers—after all, it’s there so they feel obligated to read it. For example, you can probably chop theoretical discussion from basic instructions.

Change the level of the information you currently have. You may have the right information but it may be “pitched” at too high or too low a technical level. It may be pitched at the wrong kind of audience—for example, at an expert audience rather than a technician audience. This happens most often when product-design notes are passed off as instructions.

Add examples to help readers understand. Examples are one of the most powerful ways to connect with audiences, particularly in instructions. Even in a non-instructional text, for example, when you are trying to explain a technical concept, examples are a major help—analogies in particular.

Change the level of your examples. You may be using examples but the technical content or level may not be appropriate to your readers. Homespun examples may not be useful to experts; highly technical ones may totally miss your nonspecialist readers.

Guide your reader through your writing

Change the organization of your information. Sometimes, you can have all the right information but arrange it in the wrong way. For example, there can be too much background information up front (or too little) such that certain readers get lost. Sometimes, background information needs to be consolidated into the main information—for example, in instructions it’s sometimes better to feed in chunks of background at the points where they are immediately needed.

Strengthen transitions. It may be difficult for readers, particularly nonspecialists, to see the connections between the main sections of your report, between individual paragraphs, and sometimes even between individual sentences. You can make these connections much clearer by adding transition words and by echoing key words more accurately. Words like “therefore,” “for example,” “however” are transition words—they indicate the logic connecting the previous thought to the upcoming thought. You can also strengthen transitions by carefully echoing the same key words. A report describing new software for architects might use the word software several times on the same page or even in the same paragraph. In technical prose, it’s not a good idea to vary word choice—use the same words so that people don’t get any more confused than they may already be.

Write stronger introductions—both for the whole document and for major sections. People seem to read with more confidence and understanding when they have the “big picture”—a view of what’s coming, and how it relates to what they’ve just read. Therefore, write a strong introduction to the entire document—one that makes clear the topic, purpose, audience, and contents of that document. And for each major section within your document, use mini-introductions that indicate at least the topic of the section and give an overview of the subtopics to be covered in that section.

Create topic sentences for paragraphs and paragraph groups. It can help readers immensely to give them an idea of the topic and purpose of a section (a group of paragraphs) and in particular to give them an overview of the subtopics about to be covered. Road maps help when you’re in a different state!

Craft effective sentences

Change sentence style and length. How you write—down at the individual sentence level—can make a big difference too. In instructions, for example, using imperative voice and “you” phrasing is vastly more understandable than the passive voice or third-personal phrasing. For some reason, personalizing your writing style and making it more relaxed and informal can make it more accessible and understandable. Passive, person-less writing is harder to read—put people and action in your writing. Similarly, go for active verbs as opposed to be verb phrasing. All of this makes your writing more direct and immediate—readers don’t have to dig for it. And obviously, sentence length matters as well. An average of somewhere between 15 and 25 words per sentence is about right; sentences over 30 words are to be mistrusted.

Edit for sentence clarity and economy. This is closely related to the previous “control” but deserves its own spot. Often, writing style can be so wordy that it is hard or frustrating to read. When you revise your rough drafts, put them on a diet—go through a draft line by line trying to reduce the overall word, page, or line count by 20 percent. Try it as an experiment and see how you do. You’ll find a lot of fussy, unnecessary detail and inflated phrasing you can chop out.

Make your document visually appealing

Add and vary graphics. For nonspecialist audiences, you may want to use more graphics—and simpler ones at that. Graphics for specialists are more detailed, more technical. In technical documents for nonspecialists, there also tend to be more “decorative” graphics—ones that are attractive but serve no strict informative or persuasive purpose at all.

Break text up or consolidate text into meaningful, usable chunks. For nonspecialist readers, you may need to have shorter paragraphs. Maybe a 6- to 8-line paragraph is the usual maximum. Notice how much longer paragraphs are in technical documents written for specialists.

Add cross-references to important information. In technical information, you can help nonspecialist readers by pointing them to background sources. If you can’t fully explain a topic on the spot, point to a section or chapter where it is.

Use headings and lists. Readers can be intimidated by big dense paragraphs of writing, uncut by anything other than a blank line now and then. Search your rough drafts for ways to incorporate headings—look for changes in topic or subtopic. Search your writing for listings of things—these can be made into vertical lists. Look for paired listings such as terms and their definitions—these can be made into two-column lists. Of course, be careful not to force this special formatting, and don’t overdo it.

Use special typography, and work with margins, line length, line spacing, type size, and type style. For nonspecialist readers, you can do things like making the lines shorter (bringing in the margins), using larger type sizes, and other such tactics. Typically, sans-serif fonts, such as Ariel, are useful for online readers. Serif fonts, such as Time New Roman, are useful for print texts.

By now you should be able to see that many of the decisions you make as a technical writer depend on who will read your report. From content, to language, to layout, every aspect of your communication must keep your reader’s needs in mind.

We will spend time later in our course expanding our discussion of audience when the time comes to put your report together. At that time, we will discuss document design–an important consideration that can help tremendously in making your document professional and easy to read.

Chapter Attribution Information

This chapter was derived from the following sources.

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• How to write an argumentative essay | Examples & tips

How to Write an Argumentative Essay | Examples & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An argumentative essay expresses an extended argument for a particular thesis statement . The author takes a clearly defined stance on their subject and builds up an evidence-based case for it.

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Table of contents

When do you write an argumentative essay, approaches to argumentative essays, introducing your argument, the body: developing your argument, concluding your argument, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about argumentative essays.

You might be assigned an argumentative essay as a writing exercise in high school or in a composition class. The prompt will often ask you to argue for one of two positions, and may include terms like “argue” or “argument.” It will frequently take the form of a question.

The prompt may also be more open-ended in terms of the possible arguments you could make.

Argumentative writing at college level

At university, the vast majority of essays or papers you write will involve some form of argumentation. For example, both rhetorical analysis and literary analysis essays involve making arguments about texts.

In this context, you won’t necessarily be told to write an argumentative essay—but making an evidence-based argument is an essential goal of most academic writing, and this should be your default approach unless you’re told otherwise.

Examples of argumentative essay prompts

At a university level, all the prompts below imply an argumentative essay as the appropriate response.

Your research should lead you to develop a specific position on the topic. The essay then argues for that position and aims to convince the reader by presenting your evidence, evaluation and analysis.

• Don’t just list all the effects you can think of.
• Do develop a focused argument about the overall effect and why it matters, backed up by evidence from sources.
• Don’t just provide a selection of data on the measures’ effectiveness.
• Do build up your own argument about which kinds of measures have been most or least effective, and why.
• Don’t just analyze a random selection of doppelgänger characters.
• Do form an argument about specific texts, comparing and contrasting how they express their thematic concerns through doppelgänger characters.

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An argumentative essay should be objective in its approach; your arguments should rely on logic and evidence, not on exaggeration or appeals to emotion.

There are many possible approaches to argumentative essays, but there are two common models that can help you start outlining your arguments: The Toulmin model and the Rogerian model.

Toulmin arguments

The Toulmin model consists of four steps, which may be repeated as many times as necessary for the argument:

• Make a claim
• Provide the grounds (evidence) for the claim
• Explain the warrant (how the grounds support the claim)
• Discuss possible rebuttals to the claim, identifying the limits of the argument and showing that you have considered alternative perspectives

The Toulmin model is a common approach in academic essays. You don’t have to use these specific terms (grounds, warrants, rebuttals), but establishing a clear connection between your claims and the evidence supporting them is crucial in an argumentative essay.

Say you’re making an argument about the effectiveness of workplace anti-discrimination measures. You might:

• Claim that unconscious bias training does not have the desired results, and resources would be better spent on other approaches
• Cite data to support your claim
• Explain how the data indicates that the method is ineffective
• Anticipate objections to your claim based on other data, indicating whether these objections are valid, and if not, why not.

Rogerian arguments

The Rogerian model also consists of four steps you might repeat throughout your essay:

• Discuss what the opposing position gets right and why people might hold this position
• Highlight the problems with this position
• Present your own position , showing how it addresses these problems
• Suggest a possible compromise —what elements of your position would proponents of the opposing position benefit from adopting?

This model builds up a clear picture of both sides of an argument and seeks a compromise. It is particularly useful when people tend to disagree strongly on the issue discussed, allowing you to approach opposing arguments in good faith.

Say you want to argue that the internet has had a positive impact on education. You might:

• Acknowledge that students rely too much on websites like Wikipedia
• Argue that teachers view Wikipedia as more unreliable than it really is
• Suggest that Wikipedia’s system of citations can actually teach students about referencing
• Suggest critical engagement with Wikipedia as a possible assignment for teachers who are skeptical of its usefulness.

You don’t necessarily have to pick one of these models—you may even use elements of both in different parts of your essay—but it’s worth considering them if you struggle to structure your arguments.

Regardless of which approach you take, your essay should always be structured using an introduction , a body , and a conclusion .

Like other academic essays, an argumentative essay begins with an introduction . The introduction serves to capture the reader’s interest, provide background information, present your thesis statement , and (in longer essays) to summarize the structure of the body.

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how a typical introduction works.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

The body of an argumentative essay is where you develop your arguments in detail. Here you’ll present evidence, analysis, and reasoning to convince the reader that your thesis statement is true.

In the standard five-paragraph format for short essays, the body takes up three of your five paragraphs. In longer essays, it will be more paragraphs, and might be divided into sections with headings.

Each paragraph covers its own topic, introduced with a topic sentence . Each of these topics must contribute to your overall argument; don’t include irrelevant information.

This example paragraph takes a Rogerian approach: It first acknowledges the merits of the opposing position and then highlights problems with that position.

Hover over different parts of the example to see how a body paragraph is constructed.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

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An argumentative essay ends with a conclusion that summarizes and reflects on the arguments made in the body.

No new arguments or evidence appear here, but in longer essays you may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your argument and suggest topics for future research. In all conclusions, you should stress the relevance and importance of your argument.

Hover over the following example to see the typical elements of a conclusion.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

The majority of the essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Unless otherwise specified, you can assume that the goal of any essay you’re asked to write is argumentative: To convince the reader of your position using evidence and reasoning.

In composition classes you might be given assignments that specifically test your ability to write an argumentative essay. Look out for prompts including instructions like “argue,” “assess,” or “discuss” to see if this is the goal.

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