Audience and purpose
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This branch covers matching a document to its readers and intended outcome, divided by the decision involved: defining purpose and readership, choosing level and register, building the writer–reader relationship, understanding a health task, prompting action and addressing particular readers. It leaves sentence-level plain-language practice, health literacy and the document brief to neighbouring branches.
- Defining what a document is for — intended outcomes, significance, relevance and the essential message
- Describing the readers precisely — knowledge, experience, needs, concerns, values, information access and an ideal reader for each project
- Choosing the level and register for a reader — scientific level, vocabulary and tone, explanations matched to knowledge and language for professional and public readers
- Closing the distance between writer and reader — attention, conviction, conventions, credibility, pacing and continuity
- Researching how a reader expects a health task to go — mental models, misalignment, mapping the context of care, recruitment and testing
- Writing to move a reader to act — behavioural goals, social marketing, motivation, practical barriers, segmentation and persuasive appeals
- Particular readers — compulsory and voluntary readers, patient information needs and empathy, and regulatory assessors