The Essence of Good Writing
Part Two- Understanding Your Relationships
In Part One of this extended article,I discussed how common sense and tact are needed in order to convey a successful message to your reader.In this part,we will look at the importance of understanding your reader with respect to his/her position in relation to yours.In other words,we’ll discuss how we can achieve the appropriate tone in our messages by understanding the status of our audience.
“Status” is defined by the position in society we have in relation to others.For example,if you are a manager or team leader,you will probably have people working for you.Unconsciously,you may be a little more authoritarian- or “boss-like”- in your manner of dealing with your staff than you would be with someone higher up than you.You probably wouldn’t issue an instruction to a member of staff in the following way:“Could you please do me a favour? I would be ever so grateful if you could write up this report for me?” The second sentence uses a grammatical structure called “the subjunctive”, which is used to express a hope or a wish.Managers don’t usually hope that their staff will do a task- they expect them to do it.This kind of structure for a request would usually be used for someone who has a similar or higher status to you.
To Be Continue
