Second Person First.

Here’s a quick and easy way to undermine the effectiveness of all your copy.  Just refer to the reader in the most distant possible way — the student, the patient, the user, the customer — rather than the simpler, more direct and more persuasive “you.”  There’s a person reading your copy.  When you use descriptors instead, you de-personalize your message.  It sounds stiff and formal.  And it implies no relationship at all between you and the reader.  And by the way, it’s nearly always someone outside of marketing who wants to replace the “you”s.  Don’t let them.  Comb through your copy — print and online — and bring “you” back.  You’ll keep readers longer.