How to Judge Audience and Tone

The same update can need two completely different messages depending on who's reading it.

Not every message deserves the same tone, even when they cover the same topic. Audience depends on two things:

• Who the reader is (a client, a teammate, an executive);
• How formal or informal the relationship allows the message to be.

Context is a separate question: what situation is the message responding to, a routine update, a sensitive issue, an urgent request? Two messages in the same category can need different tones if the context differs.

Getting the category right but the tone wrong still produces a message that misses the mark. Judging both well is what this section builds through tone adaptation, flagging, and drafting.