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>>>no one has suggested that you could simply adopt a style that uses
neither you nor the user.<<<
Yes we did :-) but was quite a way back in the thread.
It's called the "imperative voice." Thanks for the examples; it is a
great reminder.
Diana Ost
Technical Writer/Reporting Analyst
Production Administration
Market Street Mortgage Corporation
diana -dot- ost -at- msmcorp -dot- com
Phone (727) 431-7209
Fax (727) 724-9096
2650 McCormick Drive, Suite 200
Clearwater, Florida 33759
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-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+diana -dot- ost=msmcorp -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+diana -dot- ost=msmcorp -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Sean Hower
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 10:50 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: re: you or he/it
--------------------------------
Anonymous Poster asked about using you.
--------------------------------
I didn't finish reading all of the replies--there's a lot of them--so if
my solution has already been brought up, forgive. But in all the ones
that I have read, no one has suggested that you could simply adopt a
style that uses neither you nor the user. That would eliminate this
entire discussion. For example:
You can use the color picker to set the background of your pages.
can be rewritten as
Use the color picker to set the background color for pages.
Don't get me wrong, I am a big advocate of you, but a former coworker
really hated its use and so I experimented with dropping it. It really
does make for better, clear, concise writing. Now, there may be a few
occassion where you have to use you, but I'm willing to bet that you
could slip those in without anyone noticing.
Just a thought.
********************************************
Sean Hower - communications specialist http://www.seanhower.com
_____________________________________________________________
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