| Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993. |
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| we (pron.) |
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| We is the first person nominative plural personal pronoun (She and I arrived at noon, and we ate a good lunch). Use it in all instances where it performs as subject (including this appositive: We boys ran quickly home) and in all instances of use as predicate nominative (In the end it was we who paid the price), except the idiomatic The enemy is us. Avoid misuse of we in direct object function, as in They gave advice to we [should be us] boys. The appositive can be especially tricky. | 1 |
| The editorial we, used by journals, newspapers, and other media to express the opinion of the editors, as in We recommend a vote in favor of Proposition Three on the ballot, is Standard and conventional. So are uses wherein an author or speaker includes the reader in a statement, as in Next we will consider the opposition’s views, and uses wherein we is used as an indefinite pronoun to mean “all of us,” “most people,” or “people in general,” as in We are none of us in favor of war. All these uses are effective in both speaking and writing. Rarer but equally conventional is the royal we, wherein a monarch expresses the crown’s personal views, as in the remark attributed to Queen Victoria, after she had seen a member of her household mimicking her: We are not amused. The royal we is very formal and may be nearly archaic today, except in ritualistic circumstances. | 2 |
| The use of we instead of a singular you, as in the nurse’s cloying How are we feeling this morning? or the schoolteacher’s condescending question to a child, Are we having trouble with our fractions today? is a cliché that every Standard user should deplore in other than satiric use. (The other first person plural pronouns—us, our, and ours—are also sometimes abused in this saccharine fashion. Avoid it.) | 3 |
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| | | The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Copyright © 1993 Columbia University Press. |
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