First, Second and Third Person Point of View (With Examples)

First person uses I and we, second person uses you, and third person uses he, she, it and they. Grammatical person is about pronouns; point of view in storytelling is about whose perspective the reader sees. Fiction usually picks first person or third person (limited or omniscient). Academic writing in APA 7 allows I and we for your own actions but avoids vague phrasing.

The short answer

"Person" tells you who is speaking, who is being spoken to and who is being spoken about. It is shown mainly by pronouns.

Two ideas share this vocabulary and are often mixed up. Grammatical person is a feature of any sentence: "I am late" is first person whether it appears in an email or a novel. Point of view (POV) is a storytelling choice about whose eyes and mind the reader looks through. The rest of this guide covers both, then shows which to choose for essays, reports, emails and fiction.

Grammatical person: the basics

First person

First person is the voice of the person writing or speaking. The singular is I; the plural is we. It sounds personal, direct and immediate, which is why it dominates diaries, blogs, personal statements, cover letters and speeches.

• I have worked in customer support for four years.
• We tested the prototype with twelve volunteers.
• My grandmother taught me to bake bread.

Second person

Second person addresses the reader directly with you. English uses the same word for one person and for many, so "you" is both singular and plural. It is the voice of instructions, advertising, recipes, self-help and many emails.

• You should save your work every few minutes.
• Add the flour, then stir until you see no lumps.
• You have reached the voicemail of Dana Okafor.

An implied second person is the imperative: "Close the door" means "(You) close the door." Recipes and manuals are largely written this way.

Third person

Third person talks about other people or things. It is the most distant and formal voice, and it is the default for news reports, encyclopaedias, textbooks, research summaries and most novels.

• The committee approved the budget on Tuesday.
• Maria checked the data twice before she submitted it.
• They moved to Glasgow in 2019.

The pronoun one is a formal third-person way of saying "people in general": "One must cite every source." It is rare in American English and can sound stiff in Britain; "you" or "writers" often reads better.

Verbs change too

Person affects the verb in only one common place: the present simple third person singular takes -s.

The verb to be has more forms: I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are, they are. For the full pattern see the guide to has vs have and was vs were.

Point of view in storytelling

When you tell a story, you decide who narrates and how much that narrator knows. There are four common set-ups.

First-person point of view

A character tells the story as "I". The reader sees only what that character sees, thinks and chooses to reveal.

I didn't notice the envelope until Thursday. By then, three people had already told me I should have.

Strengths: intimacy, a strong voice, an easy way to build trust or, when the narrator is unreliable, tension. Limits: the narrator cannot know what happens in rooms they are not in, so you must find other ways to reveal information. Many coming-of-age novels, memoirs and detective stories use it.

Second-person point of view

The story addresses "you" as the protagonist.

You open the door and the smell of rain on hot asphalt hits you before the light does.

Strengths: immediacy and an unusual feeling of being pulled into events. Limits: it is tiring over long stretches and can feel forced. It is rare in novels but appears in short stories, interactive fiction, game books and some advertising and wellness copy.

Third-person limited

The narrator uses he, she or they but stays close to one character's thoughts and perceptions at a time.

Tomas read the message twice. Something in the wording felt rehearsed, though he couldn't say what.

This is the most common POV in modern commercial fiction. It combines the closeness of first person with the flexibility of third: the narrator can describe the character from the outside, and you can switch to another character in a new chapter or scene.

Third-person omniscient

The narrator knows everything: the thoughts of every character, events in other places, and sometimes the future.

Tomas thought the message sounded rehearsed. He was right. Across town, Priya had been practising it for an hour, and she was already regretting every word.

Strengths: scope, irony and the ability to show what characters do not know about each other. Limits: it can feel distant, and careless shifting between minds ("head-hopping") confuses readers. Classic nineteenth-century novels often used it; modern writers tend to use it deliberately, with clear signals when the focus moves.

A less common cousin is third-person objective, where the narrator reports only actions and speech, with no access to anyone's thoughts, like a camera.

Side-by-side comparison

Choosing a point of view in fiction

Ask these questions before drafting a scene.

1. Whose story is it? Pick the character with the most at stake.
2. What must the reader know that the character does not? If this is a lot, choose omniscient or alternate limited viewpoints.
3. How strong is the voice? A distinctive, funny or biased voice suits first person.
4. Do you need secrets? First person and limited narration make withholding information natural.
5. Is the POV consistent? Choose one per scene or chapter and signal any change clearly.

A short rewrite shows how the choice changes the effect. The facts are the same in all three versions.

• First person: I waited at the station for an hour, convinced she wasn't coming.
• Third limited: Rafi waited at the station for an hour, convinced she wasn't coming.
• Third omniscient: Rafi waited at the station for an hour, convinced she wasn't coming. He could not know that she was already on the platform at the far end, too nervous to walk towards him.

If you are writing a story for a class, the narrative essay guide shows how personal narratives use first person, and the types of writing guide compares narrative with other modes.

Person in academic writing

In essays and reports, the question is not "which POV is more interesting?" but "what does this genre expect?"

What APA 7 says

The APA Style guidance on first person says that in APA 7 you should use first person pronouns (I, we) to refer to yourself and your co-authors, and that you should avoid referring to yourself in the third person as "the author", "the researcher" or "the writers", which can be ambiguous and confuse readers. The official page is APA Style: first person. Check the current wording there, because style rules are updated.

• Weak: The researcher interviewed twenty nurses.
• Better: I interviewed twenty nurses. (single author) or We interviewed twenty nurses. (co-authors)

The same guidance warns against using "we" for people in general ("We all want a better future"), because the reader cannot tell who "we" includes. Use a specific noun: "Most students want...".

Other fields and instructors

Conventions differ, and the rule that matters is the one given in your assignment brief or your department's style guide.

• Many science and engineering reports use third person and passive voice for methods ("Samples were heated to 60 degrees Celsius"), though many journals now accept active first person. Read the author guidelines of the journal you are targeting.
• Humanities essays often allow a measured "I" for an argument: "I argue that the poem undermines its own narrator."
• Personal statements, reflective essays and cover letters are first person by design. See the guides to the reflective essay and the cover letter.
• Second person ("you") is generally avoided in formal essays because it sounds like a direct address to the reader and often means "people in general". Replace it: If you read the text carefully, you notice... becomes A careful reading of the text reveals...

A before and after

Before: You can see in the data that the results are bad, and we all know that this is a problem.

After: The data show a decline of eleven points between the first and last survey, a result that the committee identified as a priority.

Notice the fix is not only a change of pronoun: the new sentence is specific, with the claim and its source. (The eleven points in this made-up example are for illustration only.)

Person in professional and online writing

A common résumé habit is to drop the "I" and start with verbs: "Led", "Built", "Reduced". It is technically first person with the pronoun omitted, so it is not an error to avoid "I".

Common mistakes

1. Shifting person without reason. "When a student reads the question, you should underline the key words." Pick one: "When students read the question, they should underline the key words."
2. Using "you" for "people". Acceptable in speech, weak in formal writing.
3. Head-hopping. Entering two characters' thoughts in one paragraph without a break in third limited narration.
4. Mixing tense and POV confusingly. Past tense and present tense are separate choices from person. A first-person story can be told in either.
5. "The author" in your own paper (APA). Say "I" if you are the author.
6. Singular "they". Many style guides, including APA and the major dictionaries, accept singular they for a person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant, or whose pronoun it is. It avoids awkward "he or she" forms.

Using AdeptWrite to check person and POV

Paste a draft into the Grammar Checker to catch agreement errors such as "she write" and accidental shifts like "you" slipping into a third-person paragraph; changes are highlighted so that you can accept or reject them. The Tone Changer can recast a casual first-person paragraph into a more formal register, but it does not turn first person into third person on request, so check the pronouns yourself afterwards. The Sentence Rewriter is useful when an impersonal passage becomes stiff. Each tool processes up to 6,000 characters per run, and AI output should always be read before you use it. Because AdeptWrite does not know your assignment's rules, the final decision about "I" or "the researcher" belongs to your instructor's brief or the journal's guidelines.

Quick checklist

1. Which person is my genre expecting: first, second or third?
2. Do the pronouns stay consistent within each paragraph?
3. In fiction, whose mind does the reader see in this scene?
4. In APA papers, have I replaced "the author" with "I" or "we" where I mean myself?
5. Have I replaced vague "you" and "we" with specific nouns?
6. Do third-person singular verbs end in -s?

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