The case for “you”

During a plain language workshop I gave for a consulting company last year, one participant declared, “We never refer to our clients as ‘you’ in the reports we write for them. It isn’t appropriate or professional in our industry.”

The speaker was the CEO of the company, and my heart sank a little at his words. I’d just been telling the group that using personal pronouns, especially “you” and “your,” would help readers understand and use the company’s reports. Seeing doubt now creep into people’s faces, I briefly diverted from my planned presentation to bolster the case for “you.”

I’m not sure I convinced the CEO to change his writing ways that day, but I ultimately felt grateful for his comment. It allowed us to have a deeper conversation about the place of pronouns in business writing, and I think it helped some people become better allies for their readers.

If you need support to use pronouns in your workplace writing, I hope this helps you too.

An example

Compare these two sentences:

1. Using personal pronouns helps writers communicate more clearly with their readers.
2. Using personal pronouns helps you communicate more clearly with your readers.

In sentence 1, who are these writers? They seem like other people, and it’s easy to assume the information isn’t relevant to you. You might glaze right over a sentence like this and never connect it to your situation.

By comparison, sentence 2 places you, the reader, right in the scene. It’s impossible to assume it’s talking to, or about, someone else. It’s you!

The benefits of using “you”

Addressing readers with “you” and “your” is a key guideline in the ISO plain language standard. The standard aims to help readers easily find, understand, and use the information they need from a document, and its guidelines are evidence-based.

Here are some of the benefits of using “you” and “your” to speak directly to your readers:

• It forces you to think about who you’re writing for. This makes it easier for you to word, structure, and design your document for your reader instead of for yourself.
• It makes your writing clearer. Sentence 1 above is vague about who it applies to, whereas sentence 2 is precise.
• It engages readers and helps them better relate to the information so they can understand and use it.
• It creates a human, conversational tone that readers respond to more positively than to impersonal bureaucratic writing.

Ultimately, all of these benefits respect your readers and save them time. Coming back to the CEO’s objection in the workshop, what could be more appropriate and professional than that?

There are rare times when using “you” can backfire, such as in a statement like “You were not very clear with your comment.” This sounds like an accusation, but even in such a case, you can still use personal pronouns. Shifting to something like “I didn’t understand your comment” does the job but avoids casting blame.

As the writer of “The Power of Plain Language in the ChatGPT Age” puts it, “Pronouns are your friends. Yes, they are your friends. Use them wisely and see readability and comprehension soar.” (And if the article’s title compels you to read it, I hope you laugh like I did when you get to the end.)