Use personal pronouns

Summary: Use personal pronouns - they help to engage your user, save words and increase credibility.

Personal pronouns are engaging, concise and give you credibility.

Using ‘you’ pulls users into the information, making it directly relevant to them. Using ‘we’ makes you sound human and more credible.

Personal pronouns can be appropriate – your users may not identify as ‘customers’ or ‘clients’ of government services.

So wherever possible — unless it would be unclear — use:

• ‘you’ and ‘your’ to refer to your users (rather than 'customers', 'clients', 'students', ‘staff’, 'residents and ratepayers')
• ‘we’ and ‘our’ to refer to your organisation, or areas within the organisation.

Examples