You, you, you . . .

Subject: You, you, you . . .
From: Richard Mateosian <srm -at- C2 -dot- ORG>
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 14:35:27 -0800

>Do you make much use of "you" in your technical documentation?
>Have you run into limitations?

Yes. Yes.

Suppose you're writing a manual for system administrators, and you want to
tell them what users are expected to do in a certain situation. If you refer
to both the system administrator you're addressing and the user that you're
talking about as "you," you're likely to confuse your reader. ...RM

Richard Mateosian http://www.c2.org/~srm/ President, Berkeley STC
Freelance Technical Writer srm -at- c2 -dot- org Review Editor, IEEE Micro


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