W h e n W r i t e r s U s e F i r s t P e r s o n Imagine you get one of the following messages from
your company’s head office:
A. The company congratulates you on the birth of
your child.
B. We congratulate you on the birth of your child.
Which message would you rather receive?
Most of us would probably prefer to receive mes-
sage B over message A. Why? What is the difference
between these two messages? Both messages use the
second-person point of view, right? They both address
the reader as “you.” But you probably noticed that the
writers chose different points of view to refer to them-
selves. Message A uses the third-person point of view
(“the company”) whereas message B uses the first person
pronoun “we.” As a result, message B seems more sincere
because it comes
from a person
to a person rather than
from “the company” (a thing) to a person (
you ).
But those messages do more than just express
congratulations to the reader. They also seem to indi-
cate something about how the people in the head office
want to be perceived. In fact, their choice of point of
view shows whether they want to be seen as people
(“we”) or as an entity (“the company”). Read the mes-
sages again and then decide how you think each writer
wants to be perceived.
Which message seems to tell the reader, “We can
speak directly to you because we are real people behind
this company”?
Message ______
Which message seems to tell the reader, “We have
a very formal relationship; let’s not get too personal”?
Message ______
The company that sends message A suggests to
the reader that “We have a very formal relationship; let’s
not get too close or too personal.” Message B, on the
other hand, tells the reader something more like this:
“
We can speak directly to
you because we are real peo-
ple behind this company.” Thus, the point of view
reflects the way the senders of the message wish to be
perceived—as a distant entity (message A) or as
friendly colleagues (message B).
