Referring to yourself in the third person shows up in more places than fiction — author bios, LinkedIn summaries, wedding programs, even the occasional joke told at your own expense. Each of those contexts asks for a slightly different version of the same trick: stepping outside your own name and describing yourself the way someone else might. Done well, it reads as confident and clean; done carelessly, it reads as stiff or, worse, unintentionally funny. Below are the techniques for pulling it off in whatever context you need it, each with examples you can study and adapt.
How to Write in the Third Person About Yourself
#1. Understand When Third Person Actually Serves the Piece
Third person fits certain formats naturally — author bios, press materials, formal introductions — and fights against others, like personal essays or diary-style writing, where first person’s intimacy is the whole point. Before committing to the choice, it’s worth asking whether the format actually calls for that distance.
Maya Chen is a freelance illustrator based in Austin, known for the loose, ink-heavy style that shows up in three of the last five issues of this magazine.
The bride’s father, never one for public speaking, had written and rewritten this toast at least four times.
Please welcome tonight’s speaker, a man who has spent the last decade trying to convince people that spreadsheets can, in fact, be fun.
#2. Choose How You’ll Refer to Yourself Consistently
Deciding upfront whether to use your full name, first name only, or a role-based label — “the author,” “your host,” “this reviewer” — keeps the piece from feeling inconsistent partway through. Switching between options mid-piece is one of the fastest ways to make third-person writing feel amateurish.
Daniel has spent the past six years writing about coffee, which is a strange thing to specialize in but has never once bored him.
This reviewer walked in expecting to hate the tasting menu and left, somewhat begrudgingly, a convert.
Your host for this evening has been planning the seating chart since roughly February.
#3. Keep the Tone Appropriate to the Context
A conference bio, a best-man speech, and a satirical blog post all call for wildly different registers, even though all three might use third person. Matching tone to context prevents a formal bio from reading stiffly out of place in a casual setting, or a joking introduction from undermining a serious one.
Dr. Adeyemi’s research focuses on coastal erosion patterns along the Gulf Coast, with particular attention to community-led mitigation strategies.
Sam has never once finished a marathon, but he has finished several very convincing arguments about why marathons are unnecessary.
The groom’s best friend since third grade has been rehearsing this speech in the shower for approximately two weeks.
#4. Avoid Sounding Falsely Modest or Overly Grand
Third person can accidentally amplify either extreme — making an achievement sound inflated, or making false modesty sound like an obvious performance. Aiming for plain, specific statements rather than either superlative avoids both traps.
Priya has led three product launches, two of which actually went according to plan.
He wrote the first draft of this novel in eleven months, mostly on his lunch break, which felt significant to no one but him at the time.
Elena has been the go-to person on her team for anything involving Excel since roughly her second week of employment.
#5. Use Third Person for Comedic or Ironic Effect
Referring to yourself with exaggerated formality or mock self-importance is a reliable comedic device, since the gap between the grand framing and the ordinary reality does the joke’s work automatically. This technique is common in humorous bios, toasts, and social media captions.
The author would like it noted for the record that she has never once successfully assembled IKEA furniture without at least one leftover screw.
This man once lost a staring contest with a golden retriever and has not fully recovered his dignity since.
Your correspondent regrets to inform you that the soufflé did not, in fact, rise.
#6. Let Specific Detail Replace Generic Self-Description
Vague third-person self-description — “a passionate professional,” “a lifelong learner” — reads as filler no matter how it’s framed. A single specific, concrete detail does far more to characterize you than any string of generic adjectives.
Instead of calling herself “detail-oriented,” her bio simply notes that she once caught a typo in a printed wedding invitation eleven copies too late to fix.
Rather than “avid traveler,” the bio mentions the specific, slightly excessive fact that he’s been to fourteen countries but still hasn’t seen the Grand Canyon.
She skipped “team player” entirely and just described the time she stayed until midnight fixing someone else’s slide deck.
#7. Watch for Accidental Slips Into First Person
Because the material is inherently personal, it’s easy to drift back into “I” mid-draft, especially in longer pieces. A dedicated proofreading pass just for pronoun consistency catches these slips more reliably than reading for overall flow.
An early draft read “I started this business in my garage”; the revised bio reads “she started the business in her garage.”
The final paragraph had drifted into first person entirely and needed a full rewrite to match the rest of the piece.
One stray “my” survived three rounds of editing before finally getting caught in the last proofread.
#8. Read It Aloud to Catch Unnatural Phrasing
Third-person self-description can drift into phrasing that sounds fine silently but awkward out loud, since most people don’t naturally talk about themselves this way. Reading the piece aloud, especially for a speech or toast, catches stiffness that a silent read-through often misses.
The line “he has long harbored an affinity for pastry” got cut the moment it sounded ridiculous read aloud, replaced with “he’s obsessed with croissants.”
A sentence that scanned fine on the page turned out to be nearly impossible to say without stumbling, and it didn’t survive the next draft.
Reading the toast aloud twice revealed exactly which jokes actually landed and which ones just looked funny on paper.
#9. Know When to Switch Back to First Person
Some pieces benefit from starting in third person and deliberately breaking into first person at a key moment — a bio that ends with a direct, personal line, or a speech that drops the formal framing to speak plainly. This shift, used sparingly, can land with real impact precisely because it breaks the established pattern.
The bio runs in third person for two paragraphs before closing with a single first-person line: “I still can’t quite believe this is my job.”
He kept the toast in third person right up until the final toast itself, when he finally said, simply, “I love you both.”
The formal introduction gave way, in the last sentence, to a plain first-person “thank you for having me.”
Closing Thoughts
Writing about yourself in the third person works when it’s matched to the right context, held consistently, and grounded in specific detail rather than generic self-praise or false modesty. Read the piece aloud, watch for stray slips into “I,” and consider whether a deliberate break into first person at the right moment might land harder than staying in character the whole way through.