One message, several audiences

How can you adjust a message’s register, vocabulary and degree of closeness without distorting its meaning?

1250 € per session, excl. VAT

In short

This half-day session of 3 hours explores how generative AI can help rephrase a message for different recipients. Participants distinguish the facts that must be retained from choices of tone, write three versions tailored to the context and assess their clarity, their appropriateness to the relationship and their faithfulness to the original message.

Why this training?

An accurate message can seem cold, condescending or overly familiar when its register does not match the relationship with the recipient. Choosing the degree of closeness, explaining technical terms and gauging how much empathy to express helps make sensitive information easier to understand. AI can quickly suggest several ways of wording a message, but it can also add excessive apologies, unplanned promises or stereotypes about the audience. The training teaches participants to set boundaries for these suggestions and check the changes rather than automatically choosing the most fluent version. Running case study: The fictitious association Passerelle Ambre must announce the temporary closure of its reception space for building work. The dates, reason and alternative reception arrangements are set out in a learning pack. The same content must be communicated to service users, volunteers and institutional partners, with a tone appropriate to each relationship. Transfer to the workplace: For a future communication, reuse the audience–tone worksheet and the rephrasing prompt with anonymised content. Have the selected version reviewed by a colleague who knows the recipients, then compare their comments with the assessment grid used during the session before distributing it.

Objectives of this training

  • Identify the expectations and reading context of three audiences.
  • Distinguish information that must remain unchanged from choices of register.
  • Formulate a rewriting request specifying the audience, intention and limits.
  • Produce three versions of a message with explicit differences in tone.
  • Assess the versions and correct shifts in meaning or relational stance.

Who is it for and what are the prerequisites?

Roles and tasks concerned

  • Staff who write messages for internal and external audiences.
  • Reception, communications or coordination teams wishing to explore assisted rephrasing.

Prior skills

  • No prior AI knowledge required: the initial interactions are guided.
  • Ability to write a short professional message in French.

What you will work on

  1. Recognising the effects of register

    Objective: Recognise what makes a message distant, warm or direct. Differences between tone, content and intention; politeness markers, pronouns, sentence length and vocabulary.

  2. Describing the audience without caricaturing it

    Objective: Choose a relational stance based on the situation. Level of knowledge, practical implications, relationship with the sender; distinction between observable needs and assumptions.

  3. Guiding rephrasing

    Objective: Obtain controlled variants using generative AI. First guided request: recipient, intention, channel, register, length and prohibition on adding facts; limitations of the generated responses.

  4. Comparing and revising before distribution

    Objective: Measure the quality of the variants against explicit criteria. Rating for each criterion: absent, partial or met; factual checking and reading from the recipient’s perspective.

What you take away

  • Audience–tone worksheet describing three recipients.
  • Reusable rephrasing prompt with factual constraints.
  • Three revised and annotated messages.
  • Completed comparative quality assessment grid.

Method and assessment

  • Short explanations followed by immediate practice using the running case study.
  • Individual work followed by work in pairs, with participants reviewing each other’s texts.
  • Guided group discussion: what works, what needs correcting and what remains a human decision.
  • Preparation: Arrange access to a generative AI tool authorised by the organisation, according to the context of the session. Choose a fictitious or anonymised example message without personal data or confidential information; a learning pack is provided.

Observable criteria: The three versions retain the dates, reason and alternative solution without adding facts. ; Each version includes at least two choices of tone justified by the audience’s context. ; The vocabulary remains accessible and any technical terms are explained. ; No wording contains an invented promise, unjustified familiarity or a stereotype. ; The grid identifies a strength and a concrete correction for each version..

Frequently asked questions

Do you need to have used AI before?

No. An initial request is built step by step before the individual rephrasing exercises.

Does changing the tone mean simplifying every message?

No. The level of detail depends on the audience’s needs; essential information is retained.

Can you use a real message?

Only after anonymisation and in an authorised tool. The fictitious case study allows you to practise without exposing sensitive information.

Does AI decide the final tone?

No. The writer validates the relational stance, checks the facts and takes responsibility for choosing the version distributed.

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