Re: You VS One

[Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>]

McLauchlan, Kevin wrote:
> I'm fifty-mumble years old and write English for a living, and until
> today I had always used "one" to mean, indeterminately,
> any-and-possibly-all of "I", "you", "we" or "they".  Not that I used
> "one" all that much, but when I did, that was my intent. 
> 
> One should resist the urge to imagine that one has mastered one's
> language.
> 
> Apparently, that's an incorrect sentence if one intended to refer to
> "persons in general"... 

One wants this rule to be flexible, because the sought effect (in 
America) seems to be to afford detachment, and the rule doesn't account 
for one's intention to do that.

Detachment is a strange quality to assert with a word. Another word that 
does it (for me, American) is the royal we.

They both have an attendant image of a leisure-class aristocrat's 
affect, which leads me consider whether the use of it is presumptuous. 
We are not amused when one trespasses on leisure class linguistic 
entitlements (LCLE).

No LCLE left behind,

Ned Bedinger
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com
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