Essay

Ideally, the author should always ask him/herself: who is my audience & where am I going to be published? Huge difference in writing for popular cultural magazine viz. scientific academic journal. The starting point of all writing activities in this course will be the latter: academic context with expert readers.

Writing is not the lonely business that it might seem. Even if carried out in the isolation of your room, it remains a form of communication between people. But one major difference is that one of these people, the writer, has the power to determine what the subject matter of the communication will be. The reader does not have that power: his power lies in his inalienable right to decide whether or not he wants to pay any attention to the information offered by the writer.

This rather obvious insight has led us, in our contemporary consumption-oriented society to see the writer as a producer and the reader as a consumer. What follows from this way of seeing things is that the writer will become more aware of his position in the information marketplace: there are other writers around (with other viewpoints) who are in competition for the read­er’s attention. The consequences for you as a writer are clear enough:

• promote your ‘goods’ by ensuring a high-quality product (with accurate information and persuasive arguments)
• package your product as attractively as possible (by mans of an eye-catching easily surveyable presentation).

In terms of the kind of writing dealt with on this site, that is, the writing of argued texts of moderate length. This means taking very seriously the two sections of the test that the reader will encounter first: the title and the introduction.