Re: Use of "your"

[Cheryle Wiese <cjwiese -at- HOTMAIL -dot- COM>]

I'm currently studying for my Technical Writing Certificate at a local
community college, and all my instructors have stressed that we use the
second person pronoun. We were taught that it's more "reader friendly"
and that the impersonal "the user" or whatever should be reserved for
scientific academia.




>Date:         Wed, 16 Jul 1997 20:36:53 -0500
>From:         Kris Olberg <kjolberg -at- IX -dot- NETCOM -dot- COM>
>Subject:      Use of "your"
>To:           TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
>
>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?
>
>Regards...Kris
>-------------------------
>kolberg -at- actamed -dot- com
>kris -at- olberg -dot- com
>
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