A Blogger's Audience

Old habits die hard. As a technical writer, I am not able to contain the urge to first define my target audience; never mind the fact that this is just a blog and that I can choose to be casual and informal here.

But here are the rules I will try to abide by while writing:

• Never assume anything about your audience.


• Do not assume that your audience already knows enough to understand what you write. As a corollary, always try to give a brief description of any term you use. It does not hurt to start from the basics. Those who know the subject will safely skip those sections and move on to the more interesting ones.
• Your audience could be a young 15-year old student or an 80-year old computer enthusiast. So try and put in a bit for everybody.
• Never under-estimate your audience. They are intelligent enough to grasp a concept if explained well. Do not repeat yourself to try to explain the same concept in a hundred different ways.
• Always be a humble student yourself. Be willing to learn from mistakes and improve continuously.

There might be many more rules like these. But this is all I can think of right now. Will add to the list in future. Feel free to leave comments to help me improve this list of rules.