American Research Journal of English and Literature

 In every language, continuous writing (compositions) which include informal letters, formal letters, semi-formal letters, narrative essays, descriptive essays, argumentative essays, expository essays and other more technical categories of writings are audience-driven – their different parts are written in accordance with the audience which can either be formal or informal, professional or non-professional, singular or plural, young or old, specific or unspecific. Hinging on some principles within the purview of contemporary English usage, pragmatics and stylistics, this paper simply investigates the conventional and pragmatic factors which influence writings when viewed from the audience perspective. In this paper, we use an uncommon approach – the use of letters and essays to analyze issues bordering on formal and contextual properties in continuous writing. On the whole, the paper concludes that pragmatic and stylistic motivations abound in the different categories of writings.