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When someone (typically from the USA) is making a tutorial video and they say:

"Now you're going to go to the home screen and you're going to press X. Now you're going to click the white button and then you're going to want to choose the option for Y."

What do you call that style of speaking? (I hate it. I don't like them telling me what I should do.)

I'd prefer:

"Select the home screen and click on X. Then click on the white button and choose the option for Y."

goodie
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    I might dub it the prognosticatorial style. :-) – Jim Mar 10 '22 at 11:57
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    Perhaps a belittling style – DjinTonic Mar 10 '22 at 12:14
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    Those are called performative utterances. And they are not typically American. It is a teaching style. – Lambie Mar 10 '22 at 16:19
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    To my ears, it's twee and condescending: We're not going to make a scene again, are we, Dear? Recipes tell ya what to do, they don't dance around predicting or suggesting your next move. – Yosef Baskin Mar 10 '22 at 18:03
  • This reminds me of when a parent is scolding their child: "You're going to pick up every last toy you threw on the kitchen floor!" – Sylvester Kruin - try Codidact Mar 10 '22 at 21:17
  • Chatty, conversational, informal, verbose, long-winded... – Stuart F Mar 10 '22 at 22:08
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    How are "click on X" and "choose the option" not telling you what to do? They are imperatives; which by definition express a command. – Flater Mar 11 '22 at 13:25
  • I think maybe you're misunderstanding the purpose of the "you're going to" -- it's not a command, rather the person think through you doing it in the future, when you watch the video, and follow along. – Gus Mar 11 '22 at 13:58
  • One place I see this as acceptable would be in the case of giving driving directions. E.g.: "Now you're gonna wanna be in the right lane up ahead, and you're going to look for the Exxon station on the corner and turn there. Then you'll pass 3 lights and take your next left..." etc. – Darrel Hoffman Mar 11 '22 at 16:23
  • They're hedged imperatives, but the hedging is sub-standard. I'd replant: "Now, please go to the home screen and press X. Next, click the white button, and then choose the option for Y." – Edwin Ashworth Mar 12 '22 at 16:54

5 Answers5

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Technical communication guides usually recommend that instructions be delivered in second person. Direct instructions tend to use the imperative mood ("Press the Pause button..."); clarifications tend to use second person ("You should be careful not to...") (Open Technical Communication).

In an instructional context, the use of BE + going to (or gonna) + VP can function as a kind of command (Cambridge Dictionary). One way to think of this form is as a prediction so strong it bleeds over into a command: you are going to do X.1 Stylistically, the phrasing is less concise and less formal than using the imperative mood:

You're going to pick up all those toys right now. (Command with "going to")

Pick up all those toys right now. (Imperative)

It's not clear why the video creator chooses the going to mode. Perhaps they felt the less formal usage was appropriate for spoken instructions. Maybe they were shifting from a first-person demonstration style (Now I'm going to do X) to a second person analogue (Now you're going to do X). But I agree with your read that the informality may be less appropriate for the video's audience.

1For instance, Frank Brisard classifies one usage of "be going to" as assumption, and then says, 'Many [...] behave as modal assertions, very much acting like imperatives disguised as predictions: "(14) You're not talking to Guy now. You're going to turn that caravan around and head back out of here." ' Brisard, F. (2001). Be Going to: An Exercise in Grounding. Journal of Linguistics, 37(2), 251–285.

TaliesinMerlin
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  • It is not a technical communication guide. It is a person teaching people something and following along with them as that person shows them how to do it. It is conversational and performative. – Lambie Mar 10 '22 at 22:37
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    "It's not clear why the video creator chooses the going to mode." The "going to" is something you see in recorded materials much more than in live teaching. I suspect this is a matter of the speaker describing what the viewer will do in the future (when the video is released and they watch the video), as opposed to right now (which is what you'd expect if the speaker was right in front of you). Thinking back on it now, even classroom teachers tend to switch between imperative and "going to" when the students will do the exercise during or after the whole explanation (respectively). – Flater Mar 11 '22 at 13:40
  • I also think Frank Brisard's classification is conflating two different intentions which "going to" can both express, but not at the same time. "You're going to turn that caravan around and head back out of here" is a command disguised as a statement of fact; done for the purpose of adding strength to the command (i.e. this is what will happen and you cannot change it even if you try). This is not the conveyed message in the tutorials; which is why I'm suggesting that there is more distinction here than Frank Brisard is making in their classification. – Flater Mar 11 '22 at 13:44
  • I suspect the main reason for saying it this way is as filler. If it takes you 3 seconds to move the mouse cursor and click on a button, it feels more natural as the speaker to be speaking during that whole time. If you just say, "Click on X", and then there are two seconds of silence while you actually click on X, it feels more awkward than if you are speaking the whole time you are doing the action. Not saying it's right or wrong, but I suspect that that's the motivation for it. – GentlePurpleRain Mar 11 '22 at 17:02
  • I've seen similar tutorials where the speech goes something like, "Ok, now you're going to move your mouse over here, like this, and then when you get to button X, you're going to click it like this, and then you just need to wait a second while the next screen loads, and then you need to look over here near the top of the screen...". It's just filling silence, because people are uncomfortable with silence. – GentlePurpleRain Mar 11 '22 at 17:04
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I'd call that kind of tutorial / presentation a...

walkthrough
a thorough explanation (usually accompanied by a demonstration) of each step in a procedure or process
"she gave me a walk-through of my new duties"

I don't know any specific term to convey the fact that the presenter of a walkthrough might explicitly introduce his audience into the "narrative", as in the first these alternative phrasings...

1: Next, you're gonna [do blah blah]...
2: Next, we're gonna... (include speaker and audience)
3: Next, the user must... (generic third-person reference)
4: Next, do blah blah... (implied but unstated subject "you")
...

FumbleFingers
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"Do X" is in the imperative mood, and "You're gonna want to do X" is in the indicative mood. But that's not a name for the style of instruction, it's just the name for one grammatical property of a sentence.

You could definitely say, "You should give instructions in the imperative mood; not second person, indicative mood, future tense." But people won't find that helpful. I don't think there is a name for that style of explanation as a style, and you are probably best off describing it as you did in your question.

Mark Foskey
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TL;DR In the context of a tutorial, it should be clear that the imperative tone is merely used to describe the action you need to perform, not a way for the speaker to express authority over you.

In essence, every tutorial is phrased in a way that assumes that the reader/viewer ("you") are intending to achieve that which the tutorial teaches (e.g. building an awesome web app), and the tutorial therefore describes the steps you will be taking in order to achieve that goal.

I think there is a distinction here that gets lost when only seen in writing.

"You're going to reticulate the splines"

This is not intended as a command. This should not read like:

You shall now reticulate the splines, I command thee

This is exaggerated for the purpose of clarity.

A more accurate reading of the intention behind the phrasing is that the person is explaining what you will need to do in order to achieve the tutorial's ultimate goal. Something along the lines of:

If you want to build an awesome web app (i.e. the goal of this tutorial), you're going to have to reticulate the splines.

In essence, every tutorial is phrased in a way that assumes that the reader/viewer ("you") are intending to achieve that which the tutorial teaches (e.g. building an awesome web app), and the tutorial therefore describes the steps you will be taking in order to achieve that goal.

Those extra modifiers are then omitted simply because they don't add anything to the explanation, and especially things like tutorials tend to boil the information down to the required steps in order to provide a short and clean explanation.

It is nigh impossible to not use an imperative tone when walking someone through several actions which you are describing in detail. In order to avoid the imperative tone, you'd have to rephrase every step, e.g.:

Click on the big red button
or
You're going to click on the big red button

into something much more verbose:

In order to build an awesome app, you will have to click on the big red button.

When explaining several commands in a row, that phrasing is going to become very repetitive and obtrusive. And even then, you're still very likely to use things like "have to" in order to point out that something is required. Avoiding even this kind of "presumptuous" phrasing (as per your interpretation) would complicate it even further:

To build an awesome app, one of the required steps is clicking on the big red button.

This is semantically so much more complex than simply "click the big red button", and the additions really don't add anything of value. They become distractions from the tutorial's main purpose: to explain how to do [X]. Anything that obstructs that goal should be avoided.

In the context of the entire tutorial, it is clear that the imperative tone is merely used to describe the action you need to perform, not a way for the speaker to express authority over you.

To get to your direct question, the phrasing you are pointing out does not make for a specific subtype of tutorial. It's a variation on an imperative, one which highlights that [the imperative] is one of the steps towards [the tutorial goal] that you wish to achieve.

Flater
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That kind of language could also be called 'bombastic' or 'pompous.' You might say that the speaker is 'sounding off', instead of trying to establish a two-way conversation with his or her listeners.

KillingTime
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