Literati
Pronouns are not inconsequential and can completely change the tone of a story. Small things can make or break a manuscript.
If you intend to write something scholarly, or at least bluff that it’s scholarly, you will write in the Fourth Person. “One wants to hold one’s reader’s attention.” It’s like writing/reading a repair manual for John Deare tractors. More engaging and quasi-scholarly, express this as “You want to hold the reader’s attention.”
Crank it up a final notch: In Second Person “You want to hold your reader’s attention.”
You have converted a lecture into a conversation, and you are addressing your reader personally, making them far more interested in what you have to say.
If you were born when “Made in Japan” was a euphemism for shoddy craftsmanship, then you would label the as an adjective and your a demonstrative adjective or a possessive pronoun. Dinosaurs no longer prowl the earth except in the halls of congress and Toyota is the standard-bearer of quality engineering; possessive pronouns and articles are now called determiners.
Good Advice #13
Consider how your experience of these sentences, each referring to the same thing, changes your sense of being important, trusted or intimate with the writer… “I loved a woman. I loved the woman…I loved my woman.”
