"Walter Bright" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > > You and I are going to disagree on this. >
Dosn't the reader mean "The reader and I are going to disagree on this"? ;) (only j/k, of course. Although I have always hated when authors say "the reader" instead of "you" which is what was obviously meant anyway. I just sounds bad. I always read it as a clear sign the author was trying *way* too hard to be "correct".) > But I will add that excessive use of "you" in technically minded books > tends to, in my mind, reduce the book a grade in quality. The key there is "excessive use", not "any use". Eliminating excessive use of "you" certainly improves the quality. But compulsively eliminating "you", at best, makes the text sound pedantic, at worst, decreases the quality. Either way, compulsively eliminating it leads to pointless contrivances and awkward euphemisms like "the reader". (Much like my use of "like" in the previous sentence. Yes, "like" can be filler, but changing that sentence to use "such as" would have done nothing but...pointlessly increase the word count.)
