I have been working on a very preliminary intro to our chapter in the text book, and I am in a quandry as to point of view. On the one hand, I am thinking about our avowed purpose to be user friendly, so I have used second person and a conversational tone as I might speak to a student or to a class. But then I remember what Laura H. said about those who think this will not be scholarly enough, and I think I should use third person and be more formal. What are the rest of you going to do? Obviously we all need to be on the same page with this.
Second person is so standard for instructions that I don't see the problem with using it in a textbook at all. I agree with you that the informal tone is more accessible to the students. Some people seem to have strong feelings about sticking to a more formal third person, though, and I suppose consistency is more important to the overall project. I'd prefer to use second person, but this is something we need to be in agreement on. It will be interesting to see what others have to say. Thanks for bringing this up.
Given the unique nature of this project (ie, we are writing a textbook for our own students), I would think second person is both acceptable and rhetorically appropriate.
