• DocumentCode
    762946
  • Title

    A World without People Using the Personal Pronoun to Improve Technical Writing

  • Author

    Cohen, Gerald I.

  • Volume
    12
  • Issue
    3
  • fYear
    1969
  • Firstpage
    79
  • Lastpage
    82
  • Abstract
    We shall never improve the general quality of technical and scientific writing until it is liberated from the unwritten rule that prohibits the use of personal pronouns. This superstition made possible¿if not inevitable¿the development of the "technical style" of writing, the most unreadable and unnatural prose in the literature of the English-speaking world. Many of our problems in technical writing¿verbosity, obscurity, pomposity, awkwardness, and a dozen other ills¿could be relieved or eliminated if writers would accept the idea that personal pronouns are as much a natural part of communicating ideas on paper as they are in talking. Will that day ever come?
  • Keywords
    Analytical models; Arithmetic; Books; Fires; Humans; Industrial accidents; Performance analysis; Speech; Systems engineering and theory; Writing;
  • fLanguage
    English
  • Journal_Title
    Engineering Writing and Speech, IEEE Transactions on
  • Publisher
    ieee
  • ISSN
    0018-9405
  • Type

    jour

  • DOI
    10.1109/TEWS.1969.4322408
  • Filename
    4322408