In the last few months I've read a couple of articles in your magazine written from a second person perspective. I don't know if the authors of these pieces (Mark Kingwell, Does Obama Change the Game and Chris Turner, An Inconvinient Talk) think this is a clever device, or novel way to approach their subject but from my point of view writing in this manner is extremely distracting. Although some excuse can be made for Kingwell's piece, wherein he is imagining the thoughts of another person, the article by Turner simply replaces the "I" with a "you" for no apparent reason. I found both of these articles extremely pretentious, an adjective that sadly is becoming an apt descriptor for your magazine more and more as time goes on.
The English language is an extremely malleable beast, and that's part of what makes it so fascinating to use and to study, but when one is writing journalistically it is important to be clear and to use direct language. Replacing the more accepted first and third-person perspectives may seem like a good idea to a writer who is seeking a unique voice, but in the end it is a meaningless contrivance that ads an unwarranted layer of confusion and affectation.
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