Writing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Person
from the George Mason University School of Management

Writing from a specific point of view alters the reader’s perception of what you write.  It can be confusing to the reader if you shift the point of view in your writing (meaning starting in the 3rd person, moving to the 2nd person, then switching back to 3rd).  Look at this example of switching points of view:

Increasing one’s [3rd person] workload is taxing on both your [2nd person] physical and mental health. Unless someone [3rd person] is in a physically-intensive profession, your [2nd person] body is wasting away while you [2nd person] are working.  Additionally, diet [3rd person] also suffers as you [2nd person] spend more time at work.  No longer do you [2nd person] have the time to prepare healthy meals at home or even worse, we [1st person] may not have time to eat at all.

After reading this passage, a reader must wonder who is being addressed in the passage.  Is it the reader?  Is it a general audience?  The shifting back and forth confuses the reader.  Thus, it is important to maintain the same point of view in your writing. 

You should use particular points of view in particular situations.  To help you with this, keep these three things in mind:

• Use 1st person to indicate personal experience, evaluation, and/or opinion.
• Use 2nd person to instruct or address the reader.
• Use 3rd person to generalize the experience or situation.

In academic writing, you should write in 3rd person whenever possible.  This way, you avoid shifting points of view and confusing the reader.

Here are some examples of the same passage written in the three different points of view.  Read them to understand the difference in tone and purpose. 

• 1st person, indicating a personal experience
  I have found increasing my workload is taxing on both my physical and mental health. Unless I am in a physically-intensive profession, my body is wasting away while I work.  Additionally, my diet has also suffered as I have spent more time at work.  No longer do I have the time to prepare healthy meals at home or even worse; I sometimes do not have time to eat at all.
• 2nd person, instructing the reader
  Increasing your workload is taxing on both your physical and mental health. Unless you are in a physically-intensive profession, your body is wasting away while you are working.  Additionally, your diet also suffers as you spend more time at work.  No longer [do you] have the time to prepare healthy meals at home or even worse, you may not have time to eat at all.
• 3rd person, addressing a general situation
  Increasing workloads tax both physical and mental health.  Unless a person is in a physically-intensive profession, a body will waste away with inactivity.  Additionally, diet suffers as more time is spent at work as people do not have the time to prepare healthy meals or, even worse, may not have time to eat at all.

Also note the grammatical changes in subjects (“I” vs. “increasing” vs. “increasing workloads”; number (singular vs. plural); and verb tenses (perfect forms in 1st person “have found”; simple be forms in 2nd person “is” and “are”; and simple active forms “tax” in 3rd person).

Writing in the third person creates a more authoritative voice, which is something you want in expository writing.  Use 3rd person point of view as the standard although it is possible to use first person when using personal experience as part of the writing.  It is not conventional to use second person “you” and sentences and ideas that contain “you” should be rewritten from a different point of view.

Avoiding Metadiscourse or When Not to Use “I”

Metadiscourse is when you are self-referential in your writing.  Use of phrases like “I believe” or “I am writing about” or “In the paragraph before where I said” are all referring back to yourself as writer or the act of writing the essay.  These bits of metadiscourse tend to be distracting, pulling the reader’s attention from the ideas being discussed to focus instead on the writer and his or her process of writing.  Though it is true that every piece of writing is authored and perhaps avoiding any reference to the writer is merely presents an illusion of objectivity, it is nevertheless conventional to avoid such discourse markers.  Ideas expressed in your essays are implicitly yours, so you do no need to say “I believe”, “I think”, or “In my opinion.”  These are phrases we like to throw into our speech and writing to qualify our ideas, so we don’t sound too forceful or authoritative.  However, in your academic writing, you are the expert and you should sound like one.  Check out the two examples below to see what a difference metadiscourse makes:

With Metadiscourse Markers
A. There are many definitions of the word grassroot and I tried to find where the root of the word started.  I found it started in the United States in 1912 by the Progressive Party.  One other definition that I discovered on the Internet describes grassroots as designing political processes where the decision making authority is shifted to the organization’s lowest levels rather than being isolated at the top.  Grassroots movements are important because I think that democratic power is best exercised when it is vested in the local community rather than in isolated individuals.

Without Metadiscourse Markers
B. There are many definitions of the word grassroot and where the root of the word started.  It started in the United States in 1912 by the Progressive Party.  One other definition on the Internet describes grassroots as designing political processes where the decision making authority is shifted to the organization’s lowest levels rather than being isolated at the top.  Grassroots movements are important because democratic power is best exercised when it is vested in the local community rather than in isolated individuals.

As you can see, version B focuses the reader on the subject at hand rather than on the experience of writing it.  The elimination of metadiscourse such as “I tried to find” or “I found” or “I discovered/think” makes the writing more smooth and factual rather than based on opinion, a factor that leads to greater credibility as a writer.

Avoiding and Replacing Second Person “You”

Read the following paragraph and rewrite it in order to eliminate the use of 2nd person “you.” You may use choose to substitute another personal pronoun, an indefinite pronoun, or simply address the general situation.  Make sure that your indefinite pronouns agree with their antecedents.

Another example of commitment outside of marriage is one that is made when you make a financial decision to obligate yourself to a signed contract.  An example of this would be purchasing a new car.  Once you have decided to on the car you want, you have to come to an agreement on the terms.  You then sign a contract that you are expected to fulfill.  If you do not adhere to this formal commitment, you will have to face getting the car repossessed by the company whom you purchased the car from.

How did you do it?

Some of you probably decided to use another personal noun like “he” or “she”, which is a 3rd person point of view. For example, sentence one would say, “Another example of commitment outside of marriage is one that is made when he or she makes a financial obligation.” Some of you might have substituted a more specific word like “a person” or “people” or “a couple,” which is the best thing to do since it now specifies who you really mean when you use the generic “you.”

If you used another personal pronoun, like he or she, that is fine, but you have to clarify who is the “he” or “she”? Pronouns are words that take the place of a person or thing. Pronouns must take an antecedent (the person or thing it stands for) and sometimes you don’t want to specify someone in particular. That’s usually why we end up using the word “you” because we want to imply a general person somewhere out there rather than Stan or Lucy or someone specific. So, another solution is to use an indefinite pronoun.

Indefinite Pronouns

For more practice, go to: http://www.towson.edu/ows/modulepaa.htm

So your paragraph could do something like this:

Another example of commitment outside of marriage is one that is made when someone makes a financial decision to obligate him or herself to a signed contract.  An example of this would be purchasing a new car.  Once a person have decided on the car he or she wants, he or she has to come to an agreement on the terms.

Now you might find this awkward because you have to keep saying “he or she” and “him and her” which can get unwieldy. Instead, you can make the subject or indefinite pronoun plural:

  The couple then sign a contract that they are expected to fulfill.  If they do not adhere to this formal commitment, they will have to face getting the car repossessed by the company whom they purchased the car from.

Don’t forget that when you change the subject and it changes from singular to plural or vice versa, then the verb also needs to change form!

Need more practice? Check out the links provided, which contain a review of not only indefinite pronouns but pronouns in general as well as many helpful exercises.