ABSTRACT
People who assess it overwhelmingly point to one problem in writing: a lack of understanding of and perception about the audience. Knowing whom your documents address and what response you want is a key to successful technical writing. This kind of writing informs people of past activities, findings, and decisions; it presents data and makes recommendations; it provides records of ongoing projects; it tells people how and why to take certain actions; it tells what kind of outcome is likely from intended actions; and it always has an audience — sometimes immediate and well known, other times projected. Often documents directed to a future audience go to immediate readers who need the information for interim work processes.
