25 Nov Careful with First Person Possessive Determiners
25 November 2025
By David Allen, Development for Conservation
As we enter this year’s Thanksgiving week, I want you to know how grateful I am for all of you, my wonderful readers.
How does that sentence make you feel? Do you feel embraced with the warmth that was almost certainly intended?
Or does it come across as slightly paternal?
I think it’s the latter. The first-person possessive determiners “my” and “our” are placed before nouns to show ownership. I don’t “own” you. And the implications of saying so are off-putting to many.
You don’t own your donors, either.
We should all stop using first-person possessive determiners in our writing. And they are so easy to avoid. Avoiding “my” is a no-brainer. Avoiding “our” is only a little more difficult, because “our” could theoretically include the reader. Avoid using “our” when you mean the organizational staff and/or Board members.
I AM grateful for all of you. And the roles you play conserving our (collective) natural spaces.
Cheers, and have a great Thanksgiving Day (and week) filled with good food and good company!
-da
PS: Just in case you need it, here’s a link to an original recording of Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant, which is (still) a Thanksgiving tradition among many of the Boomer generation donors that comprise the largest segment of your audience.
PPS: Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.
Photo by phantomboy courtesy of Pixabay.
A.B.
Posted at 07:02h, 25 NovemberI hear you — and perhaps also beware of the other extreme. Long ago I worked for a pastor who’d heard that the use of you, we, your and our could be read as exclusionary. As a result, every month I was charged with writing an entire 32-page newsletter in proper passive voice. No more “You’re invited.” Instead XXX is happening on Friday. XXX was hosted last week. XXX were welcomed into the congregation. Gifts of XXX for the XXX were gratefully accepted. Page after page, nobody was home. And this in a place where being home was the whole point. I share in case someone is tempted to take your suggestion to its (unnatural) extreme. There, too, be dragons.