Ask HN: I versus We | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I versus We

29 pointsmaguay32 comments

When writing a post, newsletter, or really anything for your site, startup, or freelance job where you're the only author/worker/employee, is it best to use I or We? I struggle with whether to use I or we in blog posts when I'm the only writer on the site. On other sites I write for, I use we always, but on my own where there's no other person for the we, it seems odd.

Thoughts, Opinions? What do you usually do?

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If it seems odd, don't do it. If you're the only person, I think it's fine just to use 'I'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_plural ;)

'In a frequently-repeated story, United States Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover told a subordinate who used the royal we: "Three groups are permitted that usage: pregnant women, royalty, and schizophrenics. Which one are you?"'

Thanks ... that looks like the link I needed :)

And the quote that (possibly) comes from Mark Twain is great, too: "Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'"

Perhaps it's the editors part where bloggers get the idea to use we on everything...

In addition to the comments already made about sounding personal, pregnant women, royalty, and the schizophrenic, sometimes I use "we" to mean "us both - you, the reader, and me, the author." With that in mind, some places where "we" would otherwise sound wrong suddenly become normal/sensible/reasonable.

Ah, very good point. We've all experienced situations where this would be true ;)

Use "I" when you want to convey something personal; use "we" when you want to convey unity, mutual empathy or some other connection with your team and audience. If it's a close call, a good rule of thumb is to think hard and be honest -- are you referring to yourself or to your team?

Examples:

1) I'd say "I deeply apologize" rather than "we deeply apologize" when I want to be clear about owning responsibility for a corporate failure without hiding behind our corporate outfit.

2) I'd say "We're excited to launch..." to convey a team's hard work, dedication and excitement.

3) I'd say "We all hate having to do foo. That's why we created bar!" to show mutual empathy with our audience and convey that we are trying to solve a problem that "we" all have.

These tips mostly come from a public speaking class that I took, but they've served me very well for writing copy.

Another school of thought on this is if you're trying to look bigger than you are, which alot of startups do, "we" might be more appropriate.

Right, and that's exactly why I've had some tell me to use we in articles and other copywriting. But it just doesn't really feel appropriate always ... if you're just one guy writing a blog, seems like you should make it sound that way. I do see the value in projecting the bigger image, but sometimes it seems like down-to-earthness can go a long ways too...

"Bigger images" go both ways - you can find yourself held to standards and prey to expectations that you don't want.

I've seen this a lot in hobby industries - guys working out of a tiny rented space in a office park find themselves wondering why their customers think they're a big company with a lot of money. This is inevitably due to their trying to look "professional", which tends to be a mingling of actual professionalism and aping the promotional styles of larger companies.

If you use 'we', better have a good answer when someone asks who else works with you or you'll seem douchy. I don't see anything wrong in using 'we' if you have coworkers, even if they're remote or work occasionally on demand. If you're completely on your own, use 'I'.

However, I've heard anectodes about one-man/woman businesses where a person fakes there's more people in the office. Seems dumb but sometimes it's needed and they had success with it, I don't think it suits your case though :)

I try to use "I" whenever possible. It makes the message more personal and invites comments and replies. "We" is best when talking about collective decisions.

It depends a lot on the perception you're trying to create. I can't find it now, but there was an article a while back that spoke to the benefits of having a dedicated identity for your billing department. In short, it helps to separate the you that negotiates contracts and produces from the you that asks for the money. Of course, if you were doing something like this, you would want to make sure you used the plural.

I was reading a post from SmartBear the other day that touches upon this: http://blog.asmartbear.com/how-to-get-customers-who-love-you...

I use "we" when I refer to my target audience and me or when I am speaking for my group. "We" is always plural. I sense a dishonesty when it is used to create groups of people that do not exist, to imply numbers when there is only one.

This may well be a habit inherited from my start in a very small organisation where I was in charge of anything electronic, regardless of how much it looked like a computer, but....

I find when I'm describing a project I've done to anyone outside the organisation (and quite often inside, too), I almost always use We automatically. I may have done it but I did it on behalf (and frequently under the direction) of the organisation - it is an achievement and an asset for the organisation and should be credited as such.

I think it depends on the attribution. If I see I, but no personal name, it seems weird. If there's a name, and we is used, it should be clear who the other people are.

It's all about emphasis.

Every sentence in my copy has a reason to be there, and the I/We thing isn't it. As it's important to not detract from the real message, I try and use what I think the reader might expect. This stops the reader from putting too much importance into my word selection on a point that I didn't intend to emphasize.

So I use both, depending on the context (although I'm sloppy unless I'm writing copy).

One often thinks of the word "I" when one stumbles upon Martha Stewart on television. The rate at which she uses the word is remarkable. One can't help but believe its uses is intentional or at least consistent with her marketing strategy. Has anyone else noticed this? Or, are we being overly sensitive as we quickly change the channel, resolving to use the word less often than Martha?

This article makes an attempt at illustrating that more often thant not, using the first-person-singular can also be an indicator of respect and boundary-maintenance to others:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2533

Keep in mind that if you decide to hire people later on, you may have to go through your site/app and change every instance of "I" to "we". :)

My writing teachers never let us use "I" in high school, because it is considered poor form by most grammar purists.

What an odd thing for them to say. "I" is one of the most common words in the English language. I very much doubt even grammar purists would recommend against it. What's next? "'The' is considered harmful"?

I think the gp was in reference to writing academically, in which case it is often inappropriate to use 'I' as you should be writing in more absolute terms. I never did like that, though, as it makes your writing sound structurally dismissive of alternative viewpoints.

It also leads to passive voice, which is sometimes appropriate ("Then three cubic centimeters of goat bile were added to the solution"; ideally, anyone should be able to perform this experiment, and the experimenter is out of the picture entirely), but in general, I agree with you.

The mental trick is to append "I think" to the beginning of every sentence and hope that that works.

Also: using the "I" opens up the argumentum ad hominem, which can focus criticism into uncomfortable territory ("Goat bile shouldn't have been added until after the solution was brought to a boil!", versus "You shouldn't have added goat bile until...." One of those is a bit more likely to be taken personally (albeit by someone with thin skin, perhaps as a result of too much exposure to goat bile)).

Yes, should have said that this was in reference to essays on academic topics, not all writing in general. Agree that it makes you sound dismissive, but also teaches you how to write objectively and that is a valuable skill, IMHO.

The reason this rule exists is mostly because using "I" introduces the possibility of subjectivity, and opens up the argumentum ad hominem, both of can sometimes make a sentence weaker.

"You're 17 years old; what could you possibly know about the economic state of affairs in the Andalucia region of Spain? I'm going to go find a real expert, like the ones you've cited!"

Along similar lines is the moratorium on rhetorical questions, which open up the possibility that the reader's answer will be different from the one you want them to have, at which point you've let the reader make up his/her mind before you've had a chance to change it.

I think both bits of advice are useful sometimes (I particularly dislike rhetorical questions, as they usually feel like beating around the bush), or even most of the time, but I teach my students to avoid both (along with using "you" in papers) unless they can make a stronger argument with them (ethos is everything), in which case they should err on the side of making a stronger argument.

I was told this, but only in the context of an essay.

Neither.

Find a way to restructure the sentence to use "you".

It's about your audience, not yourself.

My brother when he was in college had a writing instructor that said if a student used "you" in a paper then they better buy her flowers.

Well that is because collage papers are supposed to be written in third person to remove biasing the user by framing them in the situation. You are also not supposed to use, I, we, or us. You should never refer to the reader, author or researcher as an entity in of personal reference. In academic papers you are providing information not framing a story to build character development. It can seem kind of steril but it is done for a reason. That said, in the real world, you generally want to bias the hell out of the reader. Patio11 made a suggestion on a article once in which he suggested flipping all the we's of the article to you. I went back and reworked some marketing material I had to reflect that suggestion and was amazed at how compelling the once boring text became. The reason was simple it framed the reader in the conversation.

That doesn't sound like an answer to the question.

Your product website is going to have ten thousand words of text on it, much of it on a blog talking about your company and the product you're building. At some point you're inevitably going to need to use the first person, and that's what this person is asking about.

I use "We" for any official communication and copywriting for my products. For personal correspondence I'll often use "I", especially when talking about things I personally will be doing (ie., "I'll look into that").

For anything where more than one person is reading (site copy, forum replies, etc.,) I tend to use "We".

Déjà vu ... my Business Writing class in college is actually talking about "you centric" writing right now. Only problem is, everything in the world can't be written in a "you" manner without coming across as spammy or otherwise ill intentioned.

>What do you usually do?

One struggles to decide.

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