[tei-council] Third-person vs. First-person in the Guidelines

[Lou Burnard]

In general I think imperative constructions are very rare in the 
Guidelines, and should stay that way.



On 06/08/12 15:18, Kevin Hawkins wrote:
> It would also be good to give guidance on whether to speak to reader
> using "you", as in "you should" or "you should not".  Alternatives are
> clumsy constructions like "one should not" and "it is advised not to".
>
> On 8/6/2012 10:11 AM, Rebecca Welzenbach wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm putting together the first draft of our style guide, which for now
>> consists of the "Style Notes," "House style: notes on usage," and
>> "House style: preferred orthography sections of
>> http://www.tei-c.org/Activities/Council/Working/tcw20.xml," plus our
>> conclusions about hyphenation and some other bits and pieces.
>>
>> While editing it occurred to me to add a note about the voice in which
>> the Guidelines are written. I assumed that the Guidelines were written
>> in the third person, but in Chapter 1 alone, I saw several instances
>> of "we":
>>
>> * "we refer to such a document informally as an ODD document"
>> * "which we call a module"
>> * "we also say that class B is a superclass of class A"
>> * "We do not describe them in detail here"
>>
>> Should the Style Guide address the overall voice of the Guidelines,
>> and if so, which of the following do you prefer?:
>>
>> * First-person (in which case it may be necessary to check for
>> ambiguity about whether "we" refers to the editors, the Technical
>> Council, all TEI users, or some other group, and find a way to
>> document/clarify this).
>> * Third-person (in which case sentences currently using "we" will
>> probably be flipped around into the passive voice, e.g. from "which we
>> call a module" to "which is called a module" This annoys some readers
>> and writers more than others).
>> * Or something like "choose clarity and efficiency of language over
>> any particular voice"
>>
>> Thanks for your input,
>>
>> Becky