Hopefully, the YOU attitude hand-out and lesson has made a BIG impression on the significance of pronouns (and imperative verbs) in terms of shaping the tone and clarity of your writing. I have been asked why I wait until this stage of the course to introduce this important technique — why not begin with learning how to write with YOU attitude? Learning new writing skills, at this stage of your academic careers, is difficult, this is why the course is shaped around a process of learning, reviewing, reflecting and self-editing. Think of it like layers of learning, and the YOU attitude techniques are like the icing on the cake: the finishing touch to a well made cake.
Editing with an eye to eliminate as many pronouns as possible is an essential skill for technical and professional writers.
Please study the examples below and take note on how this technique works to change the tone and clarity of each example
- With Pronouns: Your headline is an accurate description of your current academic role. However, you can also add some keywords that will help describe and give more details of what you are currently involved in professionally (E.g. High School Math Tutor). Alternatively, you may add some adjectives (E.g. assertive, enthusiastic) to describe you as a student or tutor. This will help you attract a greater number of profile views and showcase your personal brand.
Rewrite: The headline provides an accurate description of current academic role; the addition of keywords to provide details of current professional involvements (Math Tutor), and some adjectives (assertive, enthusiastic) will help attract a greater number of profile views and showcase your personal brand.
- With Pronouns: Following the English 301 Lesson 2:2 instructions, I have researched some of LinkedIn’s best practices. From my research, I have come up with a list of ten Best Practices (which I also felt were not obvious). These practices are as follows:
Rewrite: Here is a list of LinkedIn Best practices; these are 10 of the less obvious best practices.
- With pronouns: Your experience is written in a paragraph format, but it seems like it might be more suited for a bullet point format. If you prefer to keep it as a paragraph I would suggest you flush out the job descriptions a bit more. As it is, there isn’t much flow and it seems a more like a series of bullet points put into a paragraph structure. Otherwise, you can just list each sentence as a new bullet point (and remove the periods because bullet points don’t end with periods).
Rewrite: The “experience’ section is composed as a paragraph; bullet points may be preferable in this case to improve readability and clarity.
- With Pronouns: In looking at your choice of a profile photo for your Linked In web page, I feel that you have made an excellent choice in your selection. Your photo appears to be professional and does not have any distracting background features which may impede the purpose of the profile itself. Altogether, I do not have any critique in this area.
Rewrite: The photo is professional with an excellent background; a good choice.
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