Subjective: based on the thoughts, feelings, and
experiences of the speaker or writer (first-person
point of view)
■
Objective: unaffected by the thoughts, feelings,
and experiences of the speaker or writer (third-
person point of view)
Thus, if you wanted to complain about a new
office policy, which of the following points of view do
you think would be more effective?
A. I think our new office policy is a failure.
B. The new office policy appears to be a failure.
Most people would agree that sentence B is more
effective. The question is,
why ?
1. The point of view of sentence B is more effective
than that of sentence A because
a. sentence A is too subjective.
b. sentence B is too subjective.
c. sentence A is too objective.
d. all of the above.
The answer is
a . Sentence A uses the first-person
point of view, and because
I is so subjective and per-
sonal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the objective
sentence B. In sentence B, there is no personal per-
spective; someone from the outside (a third person, not
the reader or the writer) is looking at the policy and
evaluating it. The third-person point of view is almost
always considered to be more objective because the
third person is not directly involved in the action.
I ,
however,
is directly involved in the action (the policy)
and therefore cannot have an objective opinion about
the policy’s success or failure.
I ’s opinion may be prej-
udiced by the writer’s personal experience.
Of course, even when a writer uses third person,
he or she can still express his or her own opinion.
When that opinion is expressed in the third person,
however, it
appears much more objective.
