Chapter 4: Technical Writing Style
4.1 Point of view
This section will discuss first, second, and third person singular and plural points of view.
Learning Objectives
After you read this section, you will
- define point of view
- know how to use first-, second-, and third-person point of view in your tutorial
What point of view should you use?
Point of view (pov) is the perspective with which you are writing your content using first, second, or third person pronouns and nouns, as this table shows:
| Point of view | Pronoun/noun | Example |
| First person singular | I/me | I am writing this tutorial. |
| First person plural | we/our | We will learn how… |
| Second person singular | you/your | You will learn how… |
| Third person singular | He/his, she/her, they/them, John, tutorial | This tutorial will explain… |
| Third person plural | They, them, Writing style and word choice | The writing style and word choice should be… |
Use second person point of view
Since software documentation, and tutorials in general, are written to specific audiences, you should always write directly to those users. As discussed in chapter 1 of this tutorial, identifying your specific audience and creating a persona is vital to the success of your document since you need to understand your audience’s needs, values, and goals. Writing directly to your audience by using the second person point of view addresses those needs, values, and goals; helps them understand how they are connected to the content and purpose of your document; and allows them to see how they can complete the actions that you explain.
The following example comes from Beyond Gaming: Using Discord to Increase Communication in Your Courses:
“Getting your Discord servers ready for students before the semester begins ensures that you can include important information on your syllabus and front page by the first day of class. You will first need to download Discord or login through a web browser and set up servers.”
In this example, the second person point of view pronouns, you and your, represent the audience for this tutorial: faculty in higher education. The purpose of this tutorial is to explain how to use Discord in college classes to increase faculty/student interactions and communication.
Issues with first person point of view
Most of you are comfortable writing in the first person since you write emails, texts, and social media posts often. As stated in the table, first person point of view means that you use “I,” which is singular,” and “we,” which is plural, but you are the author of the tutorial and not part of the tutorial itself. Using phrases such as, “in this tutorial, we will learn how to…” is problematic because of formality and accuracy.
Since tutorials are professional documents, you need to consider the formality level of your words which affects your tone. For example, going back to the previous example “we will learn how to…” is informal and conversational. Depending on who your audience is, you need to consider if this informal, conversational style is appropriate, but for software documentation, generally it is not.
Using this phrasing also is inaccurate since you as the writer are not learning anything; in fact, YOU are the subject matter expert, and your purpose is to teach your audience how to use the software.
When you use a first-person point of view, you may inadvertently insert your feelings and become part of the audience and extra words that are unnecessary in an introductory, prepositional phrase: “in this tutorial.”
To return to the example in the above, you can eliminate words and first-person plural by changing “in this tutorial, we will learn…” to “this tutorial will teach you how to…,” so “this tutorial” becomes the subject of the sentence rather than “we,” and “learn” is changed to “teach,” which is an accurate purpose for the tutorial. Changing the above example also eliminates the introductory phrase and moves the subject “this tutorial” to the subject position, where it belongs.
This means that your tutorial should focus on the tutorial itself, which is third person, and the audience in the second person, so you should write directly to your audience using “you” and focus on the content of your tutorial.
In other words, avoid first person singular and plural.
Issues with third person point of view
You are also used to writing in the third person point of view since that is a major requirement of academic essays and research papers. There is a level of abstraction and space between the author, audience, and content (known as the rhetorical situation). Academic writing avoids both first- and second-person point of view and relies only on the third person point of view, which focuses on the content and not the author nor the audience.
The conventions of academic writing are never the same as those in technical communication in general and documentation/tutorials specifically. Certainly, the software itself should be written in the third person point of view since it is the content on which you focus. What would the Discord example from above look like if it were written only in the third person?
Getting Discord servers ready for students before the semester begins ensures that important information can be included on the course syllabus and front page by the first day of class. Discord needs to be downloaded first, and then a log in needs to be created followed by setting up servers.
The first sentence in this example is fine although it seems very impersonal, but the second sentence is more problematic. Who is doing the action? Does Discord download itself? Of course, not. This third person point of view rephrase is unclear.
Therefore, your tutorial should be written in the second person point of view directly to your intended audience, and you should avoid first person point of view and limit third person point of view to the tutorial itself or the software, but never address the users in
