A lot is written about you: who you are, what you do, how you act, what your values are. And all that’s fine, as long as you’re aware that who you are doesn’t just depend on your appearance, your job and what you do but who you are underneath all of that, the true essence of who you are.
The question of who you are has been pondered for centuries by philosophers, psychologists and scientists alike. What makes you unique, what are your strengths and weaknesses, how do you fit into the world? It’s a difficult question to answer because everyone has a different set of experiences that shape who they are, and there is no single way of being the person you are. It all depends on the choices you make and how you respond to those situations, how you interact with people around you and how you deal with life’s ups and downs.
But how do you know when to use the word you? You is a pronoun that refers to the person you are talking to. You can use it singularly or plurally depending on how many people you’re referring to. Countable nouns (like cars) usually have a singular and a plural form, and you can form the plural by adding an ‘-s’ or an ‘-es’ to the singular. Uncountable nouns (like love) don’t have a singular or plural form. They can be referred to as an “it” or a “they.”
You can also form a plural with the addition of an ‘-s’ or an ‘-es’ for countable nouns, and you can create an informal plural for uncountable nouns by using words like you-all or you-uns. You can also form a possessive with the addition of an ‘-s’ for uncountable nouns and a verb form with an added -s for singular nouns.
Lastly, you can also form an indirect object with the addition of an article, like you’re or your. You’re is a contraction of you are, and it’s used to express direct objects or things that someone else does for you. You’re a rascal, you are.
Other forms of you include y’all, you guys, youse, and yours. Youse is an informal plural form that is commonly heard in Southern United States and some parts of Northern England. You-all is a popular shortening for you all and is also a nonstandard plural form of you, but it’s rapidly gaining in popularity as a standard form.
Previous research has shown that the generic you is more often used to express norms than preferences, and that it is more likely to be elicited when people reflect on negative rather than neutral autobiographical experiences. Experiment 1 used an online writing task to test this hypothesis, randomly assigning participants to the Norms or Preferences condition and asking them to write about either a hammer or a shirt. The results showed that participants in the Norms condition were more likely to use the generic you when they wrote about the hammer, but not the shirt.