Understanding your audience, their perspective, and their values is crucial to a successful argumentative essay. Begin by reviewing the information from Audience at the UNC Writing Center, then, use the questions below to create a paragraph describing your audience. Use your essay as an example for this paragraph. Think of your audience as a specific person and the paragraph as a character sketch of your reader. You don't need to answer all of the questions below in your paragraph. Instead, use the questions to identify the most important aspects of your audience for your argument.

Questions:

• Who is your audience?
• Might you have more than one audience? If so, how many audiences do you have?
• If you identify more than one audience, which one has the most power to impact the issue? Which one are you most interested in communicating with?
• What does your audience need? What do they want? What do they value?
• What is most important to them?
• What are they least likely to care about?
• What do you have to say (or what are you doing in your research) that might surprise your audience?
• What do you want your audience to think, learn, or assume about you? What impression do you want your writing or your research to convey?

Audience at the UNC Writing Center: "What this handout is about

This handout will help you understand and write for the appropriate audience when you write an academic essay.

Audience matters

When you're in the process of writing a paper, it's easy to forget that you are actually writing to someone. Whether you've thought about it consciously or not, you always write to an audience: sometimes your audience is a very generalized group of readers, sometimes you know the individuals who compose the audience, and sometimes you write for yourself. Keeping your audience in mind while you write can help you make good decisions about what material to include, how to organize your ideas, and how best to support your argument.

To illustrate the impact of audience, imagine you're writing a letter to your grandmother to tell her about your first month of college. What details and stories might you include? What might you leave out? Now imagine that you're writing on the same topic but your audience is your best friend. Unless you have an extremely cool grandma to whom you're very close, it's likely that your two letters would look quite different in terms of content, structure, and even tone.

Isn't my instructor my audience?

Yes, your instructor or TA is probably the actual audience for your paper. Your instructors read and grade your essays, and you want to keep their needs and perspectives in mind when you write. However, when you write an essay with only your instructor in mind, you might not say as much as you should or say it as clearly as you should, because you assume that the person grading it knows more than you do and will fill in the gaps. This leaves it up to the instructor to decide what you are really saying, and they might decide differently than you expect. For example, they might decide that those gaps show that you don't know and understand the material. Remember that time when you said to yourself, "I don't have to explain communism; my instructor knows more about that than I do" and got back a paper that said something like "Shows no understanding of communism"? That's an example of what can go awry when you think of your instructor as your only audience.

Thinking about your audience differently can improve your writing, especially in terms of how clearly you express your argument. The clearer your points are, the more likely you are to have a strong essay. Your instructor will say, "They really understands communismthey're able to explain it simply and clearly!" By treating your instructor as an intelligent but uninformed audience, you end up addressing her more effectively.

How do I identify my audience and what they want from me?

Before you even begin the process of writing, take some time to consider who your audience is and what they want from you. Use the following questions to help you identify your audience and what you can do to address their wants and needs:

• Who is your audience?
• Might you have more than one audience? If so, how many audiences do you have? List them.
• Does your assignment itself give any clues about your audience?
• What does your audience need? What do they want? What do they value?
• What is most important to them?
• What are they least likely to care about?
• What kind of organization would best help your audience understand and appreciate your argument?
• What do you have to say (or what are you doing in your research) that might surprise your audience?
• What do you want your audience to think, learn, or assume about you? What impression do you want your writing or your research to convey?

How much should I explain?

This is the hard part. As we said earlier, you want to show your instructor that you know the material. But different assignments call for varying degrees of information. Different fields also have different expectations. For more about what each field tends to expect from an essay, see the Writing Center handouts on writing in specific fields of study. The best place to start figuring out how much you should say about each part of your paper is in a careful reading of the assignment. We give you some tips for reading assignments and figuring them out in our handout on how to read an assignment. The assignment may specify an audience for your paper; sometimes the instructor will ask you to imagine that you are writing to your congressperson, for a professional journal, to a group of specialists in a particular field, or for a group of your peers. If the assignment doesn't specify an audience, you may find it most useful to imagine your classmates reading the paper, rather than your instructor.

Now, knowing your imaginary audience, what other clues can you get from the assignment? If the assignment asks you to summarize something that you have read, then your reader wants you to include more examples from the text than if the assignment asks you to interpret the passage. Most assignments in college focus on argument rather than the repetition of learned information, so your reader probably doesn't want a lengthy, detailed, point-by-point summary of your reading (book reports in some classes and argument reconstructions in philosophy classes are big exceptions to this rule). If your assignment asks you to interpret or analyze the text (or an event or idea), then you want to make sure that your explanation of the material is focused and not so detailed that you end up spending more time on examples than on your analysis. If you are not sure about the difference between explaining something and analyzing it, see our handouts on reading the assignment and argument.

Once you have a draft, try your level of explanation out on a friend, a classmate, or a Writing Center coach. Get the person to read your rough draft, and then ask them to talk to you about what they did and didn't understand. (Now is not the time to talk about proofreading stuff, so make sure they ignore those issues for the time being). You will likely get one of the following responses or a combination of them:

• If your listener/reader has tons of questions about what you are saying, then you probably need to explain more. Let's say you are writing a paper on piranhas, and your reader says, "What's a piranha? Why do I need to know about them? How would I identify one?" Those are vital questions that you clearly need to answer in your paper. You need more detail and elaboration.
• If your reader seems confused, you probably need to explain more clearly. So if they say, "Are there piranhas in the lakes around here?" you may not need to give more examples, but rather focus on making sure your examples and points are clear.
• If your reader looks bored and can repeat back to you more details than they need to know to get your point, you probably explained too much. Excessive detail can also be confusing, because it can bog the reader down and keep them from focusing on your main points. You want your reader to say, "So it seems like your paper is saying that piranhas are misunderstood creatures that are essential to South American ecosystems," not, "Uh...piranhas are important?" or, "Well, I know you said piranhas don't usually attack people, and they're usually around 10 inches long, and some people keep them in aquariums as pets, and dolphins are one of their predators, and...a bunch of other stuff, I guess?"

Sometimes it's not the amount of explanation that matters, but the word choice and tone you adopt. Your word choice and tone need to match your audience's expectations. For example, imagine you are researching piranhas; you find an article in National Geographic and another one in an academic journal for scientists. How would you expect the two articles to sound? National Geographic is written for a popular audience; you might expect it to have sentences like "The piranha generally lives in shallow rivers and streams in South America." The scientific journal, on the other hand, might use much more technical language, because it's written for an audience of specialists. A sentence like "Serrasalmus piraya lives in fresh and brackish intercoastal and proto-arboreal sub-tropical regions between the 45th and 38th parallels" might not be out of place in the journal.

Generally, you want your reader to know enough material to understand the points you are making. It's like the old forest/trees metaphor. If you give the reader nothing but trees, they won't see the forest (your thesis, the reason for your paper). If you give them a big forest and no trees, they won't know how you got to the forest (they might say, "Your point is fine, but you haven't proven it to me"). You want the reader to say, "Nice forest, and those trees really help me to see it." Our handout on paragraph development can help you find a good balance of examples and explanation.

Reading your own drafts

Writers tend to read over their own papers pretty quickly, with the knowledge of what they are trying to argue already in their minds. Reading in this way can cause you to skip over gaps in your written argument because the gap-filler is in your head. A problem occurs when your reader falls into these gaps. Your reader wants you to make the necessary connections from one thought or sentence to the next. When you don't, the reader can become confused or frustrated. Think about when you read something and you struggle to find the most important points or what the writer is trying to say. Isn't that annoying? Doesn't it make you want to quit reading and surf the web or call a friend?

Putting yourself in the reader's position

Instead of reading your draft as if you wrote it and know what you meant, try reading it as if you have no previous knowledge of the material. Have you explained enough? Are the connections clear? This can be hard to do at first. Consider using one of the following strategies:

• Take a break from your workgo work out, take a nap, take a day off. This is why the Writing Center and your instructors encourage you to start writing more than a day before the paper is due. If you write the paper the night before it's due, you make it almost impossible to read the paper with a fresh eye.
• Try outlining after writingafter you have a draft, look at each paragraph separately. Write down the main point for each paragraph on a separate sheet of paper, in the order you have put them. Then look at your "outline"does it reflect what you meant to say, in a logical order? Are some paragraphs hard to reduce to one point? Why? This technique will help you find places where you may have confused your reader by straying from your original plan for the paper.
• Read the paper aloudwe do this all the time at the Writing Center, and once you get used to it, you'll see that it helps you slow down and really consider how your reader experiences your text. It will also help you catch a lot of sentence-level errors, such as misspellings and missing words, which can make it difficult for your reader to focus on your argument.

These techniques can help you read your paper in the same way your reader will and make revisions that help your reader understand your argument. Then, when your instructor finally reads your finished draft, they won't have to fill in any gaps. The more work you do, the less work your audience will have to doand the more likely it is that your instructor will follow and understand your argument."

Essay: The Issues of Food Waste

Food waste is a major global problem affecting the environment, economy, and human well-being. Despite producing plenty of food, a large portion is wasted and ends up in landfills. This waste harms the environment, causes economic losses, and threatens food security. This essay explores the impact of food waste and the need for solutions, drawing on the insights of Mara Zarask in her article, "Fighting Food Waste". We'll look at how food waste starts from farms and factories to how it ends in our homes and landfills. The main point is that reducing food waste is essential for a sustainable future, especially with the challenges of climate change, resource scarcity, and population growth. By addressing food waste, we can help the environment, boost the economy, and promote social equity. In the following sections, we will examine the causes and effects of food waste, address opposing views, and suggest innovative solutions. This comprehensive look aims to stress the urgency of reducing food waste and inspire action toward a sustainable food system.

Food waste is a massive global issue. According to "The State of Food and Agriculture 2019" by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, about one-third of all food produced, over 1 billion tons, is wasted annually. This waste has severe impacts on health, the economy, and the environment. Food is lost at different stages: pests and weather cause losses at farms; poor infrastructure leads to spoilage after harvest; strict quality standards and poor demand forecasting result in discarded food during distribution; and consumer habits like overbuying contribute to waste at home. Zarask argues that wasting food not only causes lots of greenhouse gasses but also shows how much we buy things unnecessarily. This emphasizes how important it is to tackle food waste, as it directly contributes to the climate crises. Food waste significantly contributed to greenhouse gas emissions, impacting climate change. Another report from FAO is that about 8%-10% of global emissions are linked to wasted food. These emissions come from food production, transportation, and decomposition. When food rots in landfills. It releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Reducing food waste can cut these emissions and help combat climate change. Solutions include improving farming methods, supply chain efficiency, and changing consumer behavior. Transforming food waste into resources like compost or sustainable energy offers additional benefits. Addressing food waste is a straightforward and effective way to reduce greenhouse gasses and tackle climate change.

Zarask discusses several causes of food waste, such as shopping without a list, lack of cooking skills, and preparing too much food. These highlight that food waste isn't just a big problem with how things are set up, but also with how we behave, suggesting that individual actions can really make a big difference in how big the problem is. Additionally, she provides solutions to reduce food waste, such as spreading awareness, sharing food, and using technology. These solutions back up the idea that we can reduce food waste by working together and coming up with new ways of doing things. Zarask emphasizes the role of technology in reducing food waste, stating, "Technology can help reduce food waste by providing us with tools to better plan our meals, track our food consumption, and share excess food with others." (Zarask, 2021)This claim highlights the importance of using modern tools to address these environmental issues. For example, there are mobile applications that allow users to plan their meals for the week, ensuring that they only buy the necessary ingredients. thus reducing the likelihood of food waste. Additionally, some apps enable users to share their surplus food with others in their community, promoting a culture of sharing and reducing waste. However, Zarask clarifies that while technology is a powerful tool in the fight against food waste, it is not a complete solution. She argues, "While technology can help, it is not the only solution. We also need to change our attitudes towards food and value it more" (Zarask, 2021) This qualification narrows the focus of the argument, reminding us that technology is just one part of the solution. In summary, Zarask's article suggests that solving food waste requires a combination of technological innovation and a change in how society views food. By using these strategies, we can make significant progress in reducing food waste and its environmental impact.

Zarask also argues that "wasting a bit of plastic can be better than wasting a lot of food."(Zarask, 2021) Studies have found that plastic packaging is crucial for keeping food fresh, extending shelf life for perishable items like fruits, vegetables, and meats. This helps reduce food waste by keeping food edible longer. For example, wrapping cucumbers in plastic can keep them fresh for up to two weeks, and vacuum-sealed plastic can keep meat fresh for months. However, producing and disposing of plastic causes pollution and adds to plastic waste in oceans and landfills. Balancing food safety and environmental impact is complex but crucial. Better recycling programs can ensure more plastic waste is reused instead of going to landfills. Developing biodegradable packaging materials can also help, as they decompose naturally and reduce long-term environmental harm..

Ongoing research and innovation in packaging are essential. Scientists are working on edible coating and films made from natural substances like chitosan, a seafood byproduct, which can extend food shelf life without adding plastic waste. Another promising development is active packaging, which uses substances that absorb oxygen or release antimicrobials to keep food fresh longer. Reducing food waste benefits society by improving food security, saving money for consumers and producers, and reducing environmental pressure. It is essential to continue exploring ways to minimize food waste and maximize resource use. While proper packaging is beneficial for preserving food, it can be environmentally harmful. Thus, sustainable packaging solutions are needed. Addressing food waste requires changing consumer behavior, improving technology, and balancing packaging needs.

In conclusion, food waste is a global issue with significant impacts on the environment, economy, and human well-being. About one-third of all food produced, over 1 billion tons, is wasted each year, causing economic loss, environmental harm, and food insecurity. Mara Zarask's article, "Fighting Food Waste," highlights that food waste starts on farms and ends in landfills, worsened by factors like pests, poor infrastructure, and overbuying. The environmental impact of food waste is alarming, contributing 8%-10% of global emissions from production, transportation, and decomposition. Reducing food waste is crucial for economic efficiency, food security, and combating climate change.

Zarask emphasizes the role of individual behavior and technology in reducing waste. Changing habits and using technology to plan meals and track food can help, but a cultural shift in valuing food is also necessary. While plastic extends food shelf life, it contributes to pollution. Solutions like biodegradable and active packaging are needed. Reducing food waste requires technological innovation, behavioral change, and sustainable packaging. Addressing this issue can mitigate climate change, conserve resources, and ensure food security. Every individual has a role to play, and by making informed choices, we can make a significant impact.

Cited:

Zarask, Marta. "Fighting Food Waste."EBSCOhost, 25 Sep. 2021"