Re: You VS One

Subject: Re: You VS One
From: Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>
To: "McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:08:20 -0700

McLauchlan, Kevin wrote:
> I'm fifty-mumble years old and write English for a living, and until
> today I had always used "one" to mean, indeterminately,
> any-and-possibly-all of "I", "you", "we" or "they". Not that I used
> "one" all that much, but when I did, that was my intent.
>
> One should resist the urge to imagine that one has mastered one's
> language.
>
> Apparently, that's an incorrect sentence if one intended to refer to
> "persons in general"...

One wants this rule to be flexible, because the sought effect (in
America) seems to be to afford detachment, and the rule doesn't account
for one's intention to do that.

Detachment is a strange quality to assert with a word. Another word that
does it (for me, American) is the royal we.

They both have an attendant image of a leisure-class aristocrat's
affect, which leads me consider whether the use of it is presumptuous.
We are not amused when one trespasses on leisure class linguistic
entitlements (LCLE).

No LCLE left behind,

Ned Bedinger
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com
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References:
RE: What do you guys think of STCs new definition for technicalwriter?: From: Lauren
RE: What do you guys think of STCs new definition for technicalwriter?: From: Bonnie Granat
You VS One: From: Keith Hansen
Re: You VS One: From: Geoff Lane
Re: You VS One: From: Bill Swallow
RE: You VS One: From: McLauchlan, Kevin

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