This post was previously published earlier this year, but I’m sharing it again now. Students in my COM106 – Writing for the Communication Professions summer session class at Rider University will be commenting on this post this week…

Purpose. Audience. Style. Tone. (Easy to remember as “P-A-S-T,” an acronym I share with my students…) Whatever you’re writing, by considering these elements, you’ll be able to organize your thoughts and kick-start your writing efforts.

Purpose — Ask yourself, “What are my objectives for writing this piece?” Your answer will help you outline a path to reach your goals and determine your purpose.

Audience — If I could have figured out an acronym that started with an “A,” I definitely would put “A” for “audience” first. In my opinion, knowing your audience — the people you want to reach or connect with through your writing — makes the whole writing process much easier. Pretend you’re talking to this person or these people. In your writing, “talk” directly to your audience, using words like “you” and “your” and other conversational words and phrases, which brings us to the “S” in “PAST”..

Style — To be effective, the style and structure of your writing piece needs to meet your audience’s expectations — or it needs to cleverly attract their attention. At times, a conversational style is appropriate, but sometimes it’s not.

• If you’re writing a news release to send to journalists and editors, they’ll expect you to structure your news in an “inverted pyramid style,” where the most important news and information appears in your lead paragraphs, followed by the less important information. Also, news releases should be written in the objective third-person (without “you” or “your”…).
• If you’re writing a page for your website, it’s good to be conversational, but you’ll also want to use a “chunk” style with quick headings and sub-heads and bullet-point information.
• Sometimes an “unexpected” and creative style or structure will get more attention for your writing. On BusinessWeek.com, the authors of Social Media Will Change Your Business structured the article as a series of blog entries, which the authors were writing about in addition to other social media.

Tone — Determine how formal or informal your writing needs to be, depending on the audience and purpose. This is the “tone” you should use in your writing. If appropriate, don’t be afraid to use a casual, conversational tone, one that “talks” directly to your audience. Also, it’s okay to use technical words and acronyms if you’re sure your audience will understand — but only if your audience will understand what you’re saying!

Consider the “P-A-S-T” and move forward with your ideas and writing efforts. If you have any ideas or considerations that help you kick-start your writing, please share them with us by responding below. Thanks for reading this post. Until next time, take care!

Kathy Magrino 😉

I did not need to read the article in a recent issue of the Social Media Examiner, 7 Ways to Use Psychological Influence with Social Media Content by Rachna Jain, to learn that we are better learners when information is presented to us using different modalities, especially those that require us to interact with each other. For my students and myself, I try to take a multi-sensory approach to teaching and learning in my classroom, and we see and experience great results.

Some examples: When my students write, I encourage them to read their writing out loud to hear what they’ve written. Not only is this a great way to proofread our own writing, this process involves different pathways in our brains, encouraging us to remember and learn what we’re doing. The same goes for in-class presentations in front of an audience (in our case, classmates). When students are required to pair “visuals” with their writing, either using video or PowerPoint slides, etc., they’re learning more — and we are all entertained. And, using visuals is another opportunity to “impress” the audience (and ourselves) with the messages we’re trying to process and learn.

What impressed me most from Jain’s article was this “Cone of Learning” from Edgar Dale:

See how impressive visuals can be?! 😉 Until next time, let’s try to use all of our senses and take action to learn!

Kathy Magrino