Gateways to Audiences

Gateway, North Cascades off Mountain Loop Hwy - E. A. Hanninen

While visiting with family and friends in the Skagit/Sauk/Nooksack/Sumas areas of Washington state, recently, I had the opportunity to sit down to supper with local author, Nicola Pearson (who is also a playwright and actress), and her husband, Stephen Murray, potter extraordinaire of Sauk Mountain Pottery. The artistic couple is not only enviably creative, but also adroit at lively and interesting conversation, and I look forward to seeing them again in person, sometime in the future.

In the meantime, though, the delightful Nicola and I have struck up a casual, email relationship. In a discussion subsequent to our supper gathering, she mused some about grammar, popular language that’s not so grammatical, and expectations of audience. She also asked what my take on such things might be.

Thanks!, Nicola, for our blog subjects this week.

First, I’d say, know your audience. A general audience, which likely has any assortment of reasons for attending to a written work, is less likely to be looking to satisfy a narrow range of needs, and so may have fewer expectations than a specific audience. (Conversely, a general readership may have too many unrealistic expectations.) The specific audience most often requires a particular set of attributes to make itself apparent in a work, and so can be more critical when expectations aren’t met.

Being that my blogposts are focused at a particularly specialized audience — writers — my inclination is to address their needs without as much consideration to a more general readership. I welcome all readers who have an interest, of course, but I don’t feel that I should alter the bent of my instruction to my target audience in order to accommodate those outside of that range, who might not know or understand specific references to proper grammar usage, for example.

So, what about proper grammar? Should we writers use it all the time in our works? We certainly don’t use it regularly in casual speech, but the spoken word is a culture of language unto itself. I’ve mentioned things of this nature in other posts.

Despite making verbal allowances, I personally encourage writers to strive for good grammar. When you write, you also teach by example. Well-written prose creates skilled readers. Strong readers develop into sharp thinkers, and very often, into writers.

Exceptions, sure. In moderation. Put your popular usage in dialogue, or in 1st-person narrative, if you like the casual sound of a mistaken word or phrase. Or because you feel readers will find it more acceptable. Remember, though, that popular and casual use does not make incorrect grammar or spelling suddenly correct, even if the majority thinks it is. And, on the other hand, though, why let readers drive your writing? It’s your piece of prose or poetry. If they know better, they can write their own. And they likely will, if they can.

A lot of us make use of the many forms of social media that are available to us in this digital era of electronic technology. And why not? Computer and Internet tech have given us writers and editors so many ways to create, produce, promote, distribute, publish, trade, interact, learn, and teach.

This ease of communication access has also made the prevalence of mediocre, as well as more finely-crafted, written works widely available for general-public consumption. There’s just so much more media available to readers today than even a decade ago. How do readers pick their way through it?

Two ways:

—Through a gateway of specific information

—Through appreciation of quality

You can assure your audiences by writing with a specific aim, and/or by carefully crafting and polishing language in the practice of your wordsmithing.

While I haven’t spoken directly about Nicola’s personal comments to me via email, I hope her inspirational suggestion that I poke around a bit in these topics has given you a few encouraging thoughts, too.

Please have a nose around Nicola’s blog, if you'd like to learn more about her and her writing. Plenty good stuff there to get you thinking.

#grammar #audience #dialogue #craft #timeoff #British #casualwriting