An interesting debate, where only a few people have touched on the two critical points -- the whole target audience (including secondary audiences) and the difference between needs and wants. Most documents are, indeed, produced for several purposes. We can predict with some confidence that the nominal primary audience is "users" -- people who must perform some range of tasks or functions, and that a secondary audience is often the legal trade -- people who must be satisfied that the manufacturer or seller has (or has not) taken all appropriate precautions to ensure safety, fitness for purpose, and so on. But these various purposes can be pursued in a variety of contexts, including training and real-world application, so the technical communicator must be able to foresee at least the more likely of those scenarios, and factor in variables such as urgency. When users ask for something, we can bet that they aren't always foreseeing many different scenarios, but more to the point they aren't trained -- as technical communicators should be, but sometimes aren't -- in needs analysis. What they ask for might not be what they need. Michael Lewis Lecturer Department of Linguistics MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY NSW 2109 Phone: +61 (0)2 9850 7856 Mobile: +61 (0)414 887782 Fax: +61 (0)2 9850 9199 www.ling.mq.edu.au CRICOS Provider No 00002J This message is intended for the addressee named and may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it and notify the sender. Views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, and are not necessarily the views of Department of Linguistics or Macquarie University. ************************************************** To view the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field (without quotes). To manage your subscription (e.g., set and unset DIGEST and VACATION modes) go to www.freelists.org/list/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************