Re: Use of "your"

[Bill Burns <BillDB -at- ILE -dot- COM>]

Kris wrote:

> >
> >I was taught years ago--too many years, actually--that a writer or
> >interface designer should not refer to items as being possessed, such
> as in
> >"your mail," "your keyboard," "your clients," "your machine," etc.
> >
> >My questions about this are:
> >
> >(1) why did we adopt this convention? (like I said, it's been too
> many
> >years for me)
> >(2) is this convention still widely practiced? was it ever widely
> >practiced?
> >(3) why or why not?
> >
>
A number of folks have responded, primarily focusing on the use of
second-person. I think Kris's  concern is with the use of second-person
*possesive* forms in documentation rather than the use of second-person.


From a localization perspective, it's desirable to stick with *the*
keyboard or *the* desk rather than using the possessive. We speakers of
American English use possessive forms very loosely. Our conventions
don't necessarily work in other languages. For example, I'm using a
keyboard right now, and I refer to it as my keyboard because it's
attached to the computer I use to work. But I don't own the computer
that sits on this desktop here. I can overlook the the discrepancy
because our convention of using possessives includes habitual use of
items in many cases. Japanese doesn't necessarily have this convention.
(I'm not even certain if Japanese has articles.) In fact, translating
the phrase "press F1 on your keyboard" (aside from the fact that
Japanese keyboards probably don't HAVE  an F1 key) might require the
translated string to be much more literal--say, "press F1 key on
keyboard that you own."

I have to acknowledge that I don't remember where I picked this up. It
may have been the piece in InterCom on preparing text for translation,
but I can say for sure. However, having studied some in linguistics, I
think the position is valid.

Bill Burns
Technical Writer
ILE Communications Group
billdb -at- ile -dot- com

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