: Re: Is it acceptable to mix how you address the reader in an instructional Wiki? I'm working on a Wiki article that explains to new developers how our product life-cycle works. Originally, my goal

@Hamaas631

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It would be bad style to publish documentation that did that, but since a wiki is designed to be edited by many people who will each have their own quirks and don't usually consult house style guides, doing this on a wiki probably won't raise eyebrows.

That said, you should go back and change those "the developer"s to "you"s as you can, to improve the readability.

The tech-writing circles I have contact with overwhelmingly prefer "you" to "the (user, developer, etc)" when speaking to the reader. This also allows you to more easily write to the developer about his users without ending up with constructs like "the developer should (do something) to allow the users to (do something else)".

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