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Subject:RE: US vs. UK pronoun/voice usage? From:"Phil Saum (UK)" <phils -at- eu -dot- citrix -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 9 Nov 1999 09:39:26 -0000
Like Neal, I am a British writer living in the UK. I think the the use of
the third person, passive voice is an _academic_ tradition as much as
anything. This style is more or less a standard for scientific documents,
not only in the UK, but in the US too. There is, however, a gulf between the
style of a scientific paper and user documentation. Whether this should be
the case is very much open to debate. Like Neal, I would issue a tut-tut
when reading a scientific paper that had been written in this way, but old
habbits die hard.
To summarise, I think it has less to do with cultural differences and more
to do with traditions in specific fields.
