Local Revision: Pronoun Usage

Looking over the pronoun usage throughout my draft was a good way to gain insight into my writitng style and what needs more work.

"Student typing". 2/12/15 via pixabay. CC0 Public Domain.

I am not particularly happy with the pronoun usage, but I admit I could have done worse.
These are the key take-away messages from my revisions:

How effective is pronoun usage in the draft? What does this examination tell you about your writing style?

• My pronoun usage is effective in the way that I generally stay away from using "they" or "them" too much, which reduces confusion among the relationships between the controversy and the stakeholders. I think using those pronouns lightly and clearly allow the audience to follow the story easier.

• My pronoun usage is not effective in the way I overuse "doctors" and "residents". It makes sense that I use these the most, because residents and doctors are the main characters in the story, but to make the QRG flow better and be more interesting, I should use a variety of pronouns to describe these characters.

• This examination style tells me I am good at making my story clear and I avoid using pronouns that make the story confusing, but I should use a larger variety of pronouns to make my project more interesting.

Do you refer directly to the audience at any point? If not, why? Explain why you chose to leave your audience out of the writing?

• I am rather surprised by this question. I did not refer to my audience directly at any point because I did not even think of that option. I thought the project wanted the writer to only deliver facts and analysis on the story and stakeholders to the audience, without any type of bias. Addressing the audience diretly definitely has its pros and cons.

• After some thought, I think I am going to avoid addressing the audience directly until maybe the very last sentence of the piece. While I am giving information on the controversy, I do not want to address the audience because I do not want to seem biased. I also do not want to distract from the story. I think it is important to let the audience gather their own thoughts and opinions while reading without being addressed by me. This way, when I do address them in the last sentence, I will know I did not influence their opinions in any way.

• I will address the audience directly at the end in a form of an open ended question or a decision question that will prompt them to think of how they would deal with the type of situation presented in the controversy.
• Would you consider ranking UW on your residency match list?
• What do you think is the best way to reach a compromise between these stakeholders?
• How can this problem be solved?

What are the pros and cons of including an audience reference in a piece?