Re: Use of "your"

[Barclay Blanchard <bblancha -at- HALIS -dot- COM>]

Amen! I've also used "you" in tech writing and academic papers.

I think that the thought process behind teachers emphatically telling
students not to use "you" was to stop people from using "you" in the
way the English use "one" and the French use "on," as a word that
applies to anyone/someone.

I think they were also trying to force precision. In conversation, most
people say "you" when they mean "I." How many times have you heard
someone say "You feel scared" about an event they've just been through?
It gets on my nerves for people to say "you" about something that
applies to themselves but not to me (especially when it's about
feelings--how dare someone tell me how I feel?).

Proper use of "you" has thus been virtually eliminated from many
students' writing because people indiscriminately applied a "rule" that
could once have had some legitimate basis in helping people communicate
precisely.

Richard Yanowitz <ryanowit -at- NYCT -dot- NET> wrote:

> The right tone should be paramount.  I like "you" for developing a sense of
> connection with the reader.  (I even try it with scholarship, than which no
> context could be more priggish.)  I always believe that true
> professionalism is making up your own rules as you go, in service of
> clearer and more effective communication.
>

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