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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Criminal Sentence 535: "One" for the Road

Today, I wanted to talk about using the pronoun "one," as in "It gives one hope that tomorrow will be better."

There's nothing wrong with using "one," but it does sound rather formal.

I would go with "you" if you're talking in general terms:

"It gives you hope that tomorrow will be better."

You can send "one" packing!

1 comment:

Warsaw Will said...

Bravo! In Britain 'one' is especially connected with royalty and the aristocracy. But not in the sense of 'you', but rather in the sense of 'I' or 'we'. 'One has a very busy day today. One has a meeting with one's gardener and then one ...'. Which makes us commoners even more reluctant to use it.