Another note on Pronouns

Hello 301

While reading Peer Reviews this week I noticed some people are a little confused about removing pronouns from your writing. For example, one review advises:

 **–>  All personal pronouns used in the document can be replaced by ‘readers’ or ‘audiences’. While this is sometimes true and appropriate, there is a ‘trick’ to removing pronouns.

The ‘trick’ with editing our pronouns is to TAKE OUT THE PEOPLE. Readers and audiences are people. The idea behind this technique in professional and technical writing is to ‘depersonalize‘ documents, messages, and memos.

Here are a few examples for you to study:

• Your sentences are clear and concise enough for your readers to understand materials easily, but I am not sure about the pronoun ‘we’.

Correction: The document is clear and concise and easily understood, but editing out the pronoun we is a good idea.

• Your  tone is appropriate for the setting you chose:  it is professional and formal.

Correction: The document has a professional tone and is appropriate for the setting.

• • NOTE: ‘professional’ and ‘formal’ indicate the same thing – avoiding this type of repetition will greatly improve the consciousness of any document.