Answered By: James Whitmer
Last Updated: May 18, 2020     Views: 21

"Person" refers to who is the subject of your sentences: yourself or a group you belong to, a person or group you are addressing directly, or a person or group you are simply describing. The different persons are as follows:

  • First (the self): I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours
  • Second (the person spoken to): you, your, yours
  • Third (the person spoken about): he, she, it, they, and many other words that you can see in the link below.

Generally, in academic writing, you want to stay in third person for these reasons:

  • first person can be seen as biased or too focused on one opinion, and
  • second person can be distracting because it can force associations on the reader that may not be true or relevant.