Re: Use of "One" vs "A Person"

> > "One can never tell for sure" is pretentious. Unpretentious people say
> > "You can never tell for sure", but when written that can become
> > ambiguous.
>
> WTGR, bollocks. The use of the anonymous pronoun "one" is absolutely
> fine, and not necessarily pretentious. However, it can be rather
> piss-elegant if incorrectly used, such as "One so dislikes the habit of
> wearing baseball caps, particularly indoors".

People with experience in the French language will probably be more likely
to use "one," as French uses it much more often, substituting it for "I,"
"he," "she," "they," and even "we" in certain contexts. It does not carry
any pretention there; instead it sometimes moonlights as the passive voice,
i.e. "One can see the stars every night" instead of "The stars can be seen
every night."

.