Voice, Language, and Audience of the Written Content

 Now that the TOC is completely finished, it is time to move on to the production of the two-page spread. To begin this process, it is important to understand what type of voice and target audience the written content has, however, this can be different for each genre, but in this post, there will only be research on the tech genre. For this research, multiple different articles from major tech magazines distributors will be analyzed.

Article #1:

The voice of this article is quite informal. This can be seen in the article that is titled "TechPowerUp GPU-Z" where there is a sentence towards the end that says "Who wouldn’t want this data for free and always just a few clicks away". The use of "wouldn't" is typically something that is avoided in formal writing as contractions are usually used for speaking. Additionally, there are some technical terms that are used in this article, including GPU, CPU, SSD, etc. These terms have to be used as they are basic knowledge when talking about computers, and if the articles have to go in-depth about what each term means they would go very off-topic.

The topic of this article is 50 free computer programs that are all recommended for different reasons, which can be seen underneath the category titles such as "Maintenance & Repair". The article is introduced by having a whole page with just a picture and a small amount of text that says "The best of the freebies" and has a small paragraph underneath it to elaborate on what that means. Lastly, there is not any use of pull quotes in this article.

Article #2:

The voice of this article is also informal. This is because there are many sentences such as "We like that idea" which not only uses a phrase that is used in a joking manner but also features first-person words such as "our" along with the rest of the article, which is not proper for formal magazine articles. Like the previous article, this article has technical terms such as TKL and hot-swap, and even has some slang such as calling keyboards "boards" for short. This is because like in the previous article, these terms are used amongst people interested in technology and are common knowledge in the community.

The topic of this article is about making custom keyboards. Unlike the previous article, this article is introduced by simply having "Print, Build, & Wired Your Own Keyboard" as a title instead of having an entire page dedicated to it. To elaborate on this title, the first few paragraphs talk about the history of keyboards and recent actions by keyboard companies that have allowed for custom keyboards to be made. There are also no pull quotes included in this article.

 

Article #3:

Different from the previous articles, this article features a more formal and academic voice instead of an informal voice. This can be seen in the more informational text to the right of the second page which only has information about the findings of the Fitbit. This is more fit for this type of article because instead of teaching the readers how to do something or showing them something that they can buy or download, this article is more centered on facts about a topic so it is better to use straightforward text for readers to quickly understand what they are reading about.

This article features some technical terms such as NFC and ECG, but no slang terms. The reason for these technical terms is to keep the topic straightforward to the reader.

The topic of this article is what a Fitbit is like when it is broken down and it goes over what features of the Fitbit are discovered. This is a generic topic to see as many different types of technology are often broken down in tech magazines in order to inform the reader on things that they would not have known before, as the average person will not spend the time or money in order to take apart technology just for knowledge.

There are also no pull quotes implemented in this article either.

Overall:

For each of the articles that have been analyzed, there is a common topic about some form of technology whether it be hardware such as keyboards or software such as programs that can be downloaded. Through each article, there has been a consistency of no pull quotes and an abundance of technical terms of the topic. Because of this, the target audience is anybody who is around technology a lot in their life, whether it be from a hobby or a job. This is because most of the terms are not familiar to an average person.

Conclusion:

The two-page spreads of tech magazines consist of mostly the same components such as language and content itself. The information in the spreads is shown in such a way that it is easiest for readers to quickly obtain the knowledge that they desire. Moving forward, the actual layout and text for the two-page spread in my own magazine will start to be drafted.