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

[David Sewell]

As the Cretan liar said, You should never tell people what to do!

(sorry...)

On Mon, 6 Aug 2012, Lou Burnard wrote:

> 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
>
>

-- 
David Sewell, Editorial and Technical Manager
ROTUNDA, The University of Virginia Press
PO Box 400314, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4314 USA
Email: dsewell at virginia.edu   Tel: +1 434 924 9973
Web: http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/