jaredsinclair.com
I'm a registered nurse. I make apps for nurses.
I live in Nashville. Contact me on gmail at jaredsinclair.rn
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I was a part of a big discussion this week over the use of “my” or “your” in text labels in software. My initial reaction to the use of “my” (“My Documents,” “My Computer”) has always been revulsion. Why would the computer speak in first person on my behalf? It’s cloying, and every bit as weird as a person using the royal “We.”
When opinions in this discussion started to vary widely, I decided to ask my brother to clarify things. He’s especially good at that sort of thing. He thinks — and, I suppose, now so do I — that either one can be appropriate, depending on the context.
For example, when I’m alone on my computer, editing a photo library or splicing together home movies, I’m interacting with my own stuff, by myself, so “My Photos” or “My Movies” makes sense.
Other contexts are different. Software that doesn’t yet have your content, even if it is asking you to enter it, shouldn’t use the word “my.” Everything I see on the screen is somebody else’s stuff. If the the majority of the content being displayed is not created by me (in this case, the software is a bunch of buttons, images, and sliders that are eliciting personal information from the user) then I’m not interacting with “my stuff” as much as I’m enjoying something that the software designers created for me to experience. In these cases, saying “Your Stuff” is more appropriate.
Whether or not software designers use “my” or “yours” when labelling content or folders, all instructional text, such as, “Please review your answers” should be in the second person. Saying “Review My Answers” just sounds weird to me.
