Addressing your readers, as I do throughout
this little book, can make your writing more conversational and thus more
personal.
If your stocks
have risen so much in recent years that they represent an uncomfortably
large portion of your assets, you should consider
long-term U.S. Treasury bonds.
The personal pronouns
your and you draw the reader into the sentence far more
than would the impersonal: If stocks have risen so much in
recent years that they represent an uncomfortably large portion
of an individual's assets, one should consider long-term U.S.
Treasury bonds. Compare the effect of writing you should
consider with that of writing simply consider, the difference
between direct address and the imperative.
We know you're
reading this.
Turn off a main road, wander into a village,
go to see an ancient ruin, and you are in another country,
the one where people live as they have for so many thousands of
years.
See how the imperatives are softened?
And you, with your western products,
training, cash, clout and back-up, are fortunate compared with your
local counterparts.
