ThirdPerson

Last edit November 22, 2014
You always hear athletes like Deion Sanders saying things like, "Deion is going to score 50 points today" in interviews.

When did Deion start playing basketball? :)

That's ThirdPerson dialog. It comes off as very self-centric.

Don't confuse ThirdPerson dialog with the third man http://us.imdb.com/Title?0041959, one of the best films ever made.

-- FrankPurcell

It's not only athletes that do this - politicians do it all the time. BobDole, for example, was parodied by comedians for his extensive use. The benefit of doing it is that it constantly repeats the name that the speaker wants the audience to remember. It also makes promises sound like statements of fact.

In addition to using ThirdPerson as a substitute for FirstPerson, it can be used as a substitute for SecondPerson to show deferrence. For example, "Would His Majesty [third person] care to dine now?"

-- That's what KrisJohnson has to say.

Can somebody point me to a Wiki page here, where there was a style recommendation, that authors should use ThirdPerson speech to refer to their own contributions. Consequently authors in the MeatballWiki refer to their recent changes in their ShortDigest by their name

BTW.:-) on GoodStyle, FridemarPache found : 'Make editing and elaboration easier by avoiding the use of "I" where possible (except in your WikiHomePage)'

Personal Pronouns:
  • First person: I, we
  • Second person: you
  • Third person: he, she, they, it, etc.
Source: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_pronuse.html

Possesive Prounouns:
  • Second Person: your

Ancient Cities which are most certainly not pronouns:
  • Ur

Rotation about a vertical axis that is certainly not a pronoun:
  • Yaw

It's fun !!

ThirdPerson is used commonly in literature such as essays, reports or newspaper articles. ThirdPerson removes the persona or author from the text and the result is the reader is not aware of the relationship or rapport between themselves and the author/persona. ThirdPerson is occasionally used, because of this apparent objectivity, to convince, debate or communicate some bias without being 'caught out'.