Caroline Linkerman @caroinky

More often than not, the only reader most students have in mind when they sit down to write an essay is the person who’s marking it.
And that’s entirely understandable: when you’re completing an assignment for a particular course, you definitely want to write with your professor’s expectations in mind. Still, writing for an audience of one isn’t necessarily the best strategy.
Imagining an audience beyond your professor can, in fact, have a tangible effect on your writing.
Too often, when we sit down to write our term paper outline, we’re writing as though we were scribbling away in a journal, when really what we should be doing is crafting a public address.
Writers who keep the needs of their audience in mind tend to write more clearly and more concisely. Their writing also tends to be more argumentative, entirely because they’re imagine themselves convincing an engaged audience why their perspective is valid.