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You've been up nights, haven't you? Yeah, sure, you're not the first person bewildered by the second-person point of view in writing. Once you even met a third person who not only didn't understand the second person, but thought he could learn about all the persons by reading People. But still, you toss and turn. You go online and skip the parts about the first person, in which a writer or narrator employs the pronouns "I" or "we," as in "I sent my question to Ask Yahoo!" Likewise, you pass over the stuff about the
third person, in which an author makes use of someone else to describe the action, as in "Jane sent her question to Ask Yahoo!" But what about the second-person point of view, in which the writer addresses the reader directly, as in "You sent a question to Ask Yahoo!?" Most writers shy away from the second person, because, one, it drives readers crazy, and two, it's gone out of style, although it was used more in the past. You now know the second person is still employed in manuals or
directions. You also know that in the 1980s there was a resurgence of the form in fiction, like in that trendy novel Bright Lights, Big City. Now that you understand the second person, you can sleep again. But wait. What's this? In some languages, there are more than three persons? So many persons, you think. So damn many persons.
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