exhorted in discussions of writing. “Above all else” good writing “puts the
reader first”.
302
To do this it is necessary to “know your audience”.
303
Identifying intended readers is usually a necessary prelude to determining two
characteristics of your readers –
their knowledge of the subject and their
purpose in reading the text. By determining these you can decide the level and
content of your text.
Knowledge
Some readers will know and understand more about a subject than others. A
reader’s level of knowledge and understanding can be represented by a
mountain. The higher up the mountain a reader is, the more they know about a
subject, so less that needs to be explained; conversely the lower they are the
more that needs to be explained. A legal writer accommodates this by asking
not only “Who is my audience?” but whether their audience would “be able to
understand” what they are writing.
304
Readers of legal text fall into several broad classes:
(1)
Lawyers specialised in an area.
(2)
Lawyers generally.
(3)
Law students.
(4)
Non lawyers, for example a party to a case, a client, the reading public
or the general public.
While it is both simple and convenient to see readers of legal texts falling into
one of these major classes, these classes are neither fixed nor homogeneous.
For example, even lawyers specialised in a subject can exhibit variations in
their levels of knowledge and understanding. Consequently, you should see
these classes as a starting point for analysing the likely range of your readers.
Obviously there can be numerous subdivisions of these classes, varying with
circumstances according to matters such as breadth of knowledge and depth
of understanding.
Moreover, it is also a convenient simplification to think of a text being
exclusively for one or more classes of readers. There may be other readers
who would read a text, provided it addressed their level of knowledge and
understanding. We explain below how to target a text to several classes of
readers.
___________________
302
Duckworth (2003) in Sheard (2003), p 93
303
Duckworth (2003) in Sheard (2003), p 100
304
Duckworth (2003) in Sheard (2003), p 94
 |
 |
 |