Depopulating Sentences and Writing in the Non-Person

by Ken Bresler

The Vocabula Review, June 2003

As a graduate-level instructor of ethics, I regularly assign students to write about the system of ethical thought they adhere to. One of my students turned in a paper describing Christian ethics. When I reproached him for writing about what Christians believe, not what he believes, he said that his other professors told him not to write in the first person. When teacher after teacher, grade after grade, and level after level try to beat the first person out of us, we’re no longer sure how to write about our individual beliefs and experiences.

What about the second person? You may shy away from it because you think that it sounds too casual. But writing in the second person doesn’t have to sound casual; it can sound personal.

As for the third person, it can sound neutral, and sometimes aloof. But first person, second person, and third person are not the end of it. Some people are so trained to delete references to people in their writing that they depopulate their sentences. They write in what I call the non-person.

Read this paragraph, which I came across, and notice that it’s devoid of people:

No people survived in this paragraph, except for allusions to customers.

I can think of four reasons to avoid depopulating your sentences and writing in the non-person.

1. People are interesting. That’s why people need people, people-watch, and read People Magazine. People are generally more interesting and easier to envision than concepts, such as the preceding “technologies,” “opportunities,” “efficiencies,” “delivery,” “consistency,” and so on. So the writer could have written that “technologies present accountants with opportunities to create new efficiencies.”Even entities, such as “offices” and “corporations,” are generally more interesting and easier to envision than concepts. The writer could have written that “technologies present offices with opportunities to create new efficiencies.”

2. It often takes a lot of work for a writer to kill all people. The following example is about evaluating employees’ job performances:“Multiple assessment factors also make it likely that there will be evidence of success in some areas even if there are also indicators of problems. Because success motivates, highlighting areas of good performance may spur improvement in areas of weakness.”The writer worked hard to write a paragraph about people but without people! Here’s a rewritten version, correcting some other flaws:“Multiple ways to assess an employee’s performance also make it more likely to show that an employee has succeeded in at least one area. Because success motivates people, highlighting an employee’s good performance in one or more areas may spur the employee to improve weak performance in other areas.”

3. It often takes more work for a reader to understand a depopulated passage. Consider another example:“Valuable lessons learned within programs are not available to others because there is no structure for circulating best practices and exchanging information.”The only reference to people is the vague “others.” The sentence is about “valuable lessons” and “structure for circulating best practices” although it could be more about people. Without correcting the other flaws in the sentence, it can be repopulated easily:“Valuable lessons that people learn within programs are not available to others….”

4. With people, you have accountability. Consider this sentence:“Commitment to real improvements in quality and access to services is an important ingredient.”Commitment from whom? The sentence doesn’t say because it is depopulated. The buck doesn’t stop anywhere because no one has the buck. The sentence lacks anyone who can possibly accept the buck.

Here’s a slightly pretentious warning:

“Proper maintenance of this equipment will help guarantee its longevity.”

If you rewrite the warning in the second person, instead of the non-person, you:

• • Make it more personal.
  • Make it relevant to the reader, and possibly grab the reader’s attention.
  • Make it easier to understand.
  • Make it less pretentious.
  • Increase accountability.

Now we know who’s responsible for the longevity of the equipment: you, not a process called “proper maintenance.”

Avoiding the passive voice will solve only a small portion of the problem of writing in the non-person. Consider this example: “The equipment was not maintained.” It’s written in the non-person and in the passive voice—specifically, the passive voice with agent deleted. Restore the agent and you get something like: “The equipment was not maintained by the accountants.”

The sentence is no longer in the non-person, but still in the passive voice. The passive voice was not really responsible for depopulating the sentence. If you reread the other depopulated sentences I have used, you’ll see that each is in the active voice. Writing in the non-person and writing in the passive are both problems, but they overlap only slightly and are related only slightly. The solution to depopulated sentences is—not to use the active voice, which is a solution to a different problem—but to put people in your sentences.

By the way, not all depopulated phrases and sentences are terrible. Consider “No smoking” and “No parking.” You can’t beat them for simplicity and directness.

I have already discussed one reason people write in the non-person: many teachers have beaten the first person out of us. (The first President George Bush often clipped “I” from the start of his sentences because his parents had taught him to be modest. Bush was speaking in the first person but without the personal pronoun.)

Another reason people write in the non-person is that it can sound official and authoritative. Statutes, which are easy to depopulate, are official and authoritative. Hence, this example: “The penalty for smoking outside designated areas is….” When writers of warnings need to sound official and authoritative, they often turn to the non-person, which accounts for so many depopulated warnings.

The purpose of warnings is to warn people, right? That’s why so many posted warnings are in large red letters, making them easy to notice. But too many warnings are depopulated, making them hard to understand. The signs say in effect: “We have important information to convey, but you have to figure it out.” Warnings unintentionally become what many disclosure statements intentionally are: concealment statements.

Depopulated warnings matter because warnings can be a matter of life and death. Consider this warning: “Improper use may cause injury or death.” If people have difficulty understanding a warning without people, it can lead to a world with fewer people.