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From: "Keith Hansen" <KRH -at- weiland-wfg -dot- com>
Subject: RE: "You" ad "Yours"; was, "grammar question"
To: "Leonard C. Porrello" <Leonard -dot- Porrello -at- SoleraTec -dot- com>,
<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Leonard wrote:
<<Just curious, why are you averse to "you" and "your"? I use them when
I want to draw a reader into a text or avoid an imperative and the
passive voice.>>
I agree--they can draw in the reader. This debate reminded me of an
English teacher I once had. Her one schtick was changing the word "you"
to "one." So, for example, a sentence such as:
* "You must come to class every day."
would be changed to...
* "One must come to class every day."
Her argument was that "you" is addressed to a specific individual. If
the sentence refers to any hypothetical, abstract person it should be
"one."
I thought (and think) this is utterly absurd. Use of "one" sounds like
something Queen Victoria would say. Stuffy. Pompous. Doesn't sound like
normal, modern English. "You" is direct and to the point; it speaks
directly to the reader.
Of course, "you" can be easily avoided. "You must come to class every
day" can be changed to "All students must come to class every day." I'd
probably use "you/your" somewhat sparingly, but it can make writing
speak directly to the reader. In extremely formal academic writing, I
suppose it should be avoided.
Keith
----------------------------------------------
I also feel that "you" and "your" are good for drawing in the reader --
but now I'm wondering if I did the right thing on one occasion when I
went on a search and destroy mission to get rid of all third-person
pronouns and replace them with second person. It was when I co-authored
the cataloging textbook with my mother. Her previous edition was full of
statements such as "the beginning cataloger will notice ... " I went
through and replaced all such statements with statements such as "You
will notice ... " The thing is, it WAS an academic textbook, so maybe
her original choice of words was appropriate. Still, the reviews of the
book did praise the more readable style.
Oh, and BTW, if you have an aversion to using "you" and "your," but you
write sentences in the imperative -- i.e., "Press the F20 key." -- you
have an understood "you" in there.
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