Local Revision: Pronoun Usage

Analyzing my pronoun usage was interesting, because it is not usually something I would normally do as part of my revision process. Still, I came upon very interesting observations.

Brian Wasko, "Pronouns" 6-03-13 via blog.writeathome.com

I would say that my pronoun usage could be better. I found that when I was telling Henry's story, I used a lot of pronouns simply because the story is all about him. Actively examining my pronoun usage tells me that while writing can come very natural to me, revision is always necessary. I found that sometimes I used too many pronouns in one sentence, or a couple of sentences, and the reader could get confused about who I was talking about.

I never use the "you" pronoun in my piece; however, I do ask a rhetorical question at the beginning of my QRG. Even still, this is not necessarily speaking directly to the audience. I think I unconsciously chose not to directly speak to the audience. This is most likely because it has been drilled into my brain for my entire high school career to avoid the 2nd person point of view when writing something professionally. But in this specific piece, I think I avoided speaking to the audience because I didn't want them to feel at fault for this issue. I did not want the whole piece to feel like "THIS IS A PROBLEM LOOK DON'T YOU AGREE????" and more, "These are the facts, these are the options, here is the story." Looking back, I'm sure there are ways I could've incorporated 2nd person point of view without telling them what to do.