Pronoun Use

• In any third-person perspective, the grammatical third person dominates the narrative, outside of dialogue. This means that the story is told in terms of “he” and “she”; there is no use of “I” or “me” outside of words actually spoken by characters. This keeps a certain degree of separation between the reader and the characters of the story.
  
  

Reliability

• When a story is told from the first-person perspective, the writer filters plot events through the character’s perspective, which introduces an element of unreliability to the reporting. Writers often use this as an additional element of characterization, as J.D. Salinger did in "The Catcher in the Rye." Third-person point of view removes the potential unreliability of a narrator. Readers can have a greater degree of trust in the plot.
  
  

Interior View

• Unlike the third-person observer point of view, which is strictly limited to a camera-eye view of what can be seen and heard, the third-person limited perspective gives inside information on the character the writer is focusing on. Third-person limited perspective allows the reader to learn of the character’s thoughts when they remain unvoiced and allows the use of flashbacks to illustrate memories of that character.
  
  

Narrow Character Focus

• Third-person limited point of view gives the reader a narrower character focus than third-person omniscient does. This is a tool a writer can use to build sympathy for the character. Even when a character might be hard to like, the reader finds it harder to dismiss that character as unimportant or unlikeable when he or she is the character that readers know best.
  
  

Shifting Third-Person Limited

• Third-person limited is an option used by many authors when they are writing novels with a large scope, such as historical fiction or fantasy. Often, authors of these works will use third-person limited for several different characters over the course of the book. The third-person limited offers the close relationship between the reader and the character that a first-person narrative would. At the same time, it avoids the confusion that would result if the author moved serially through several different first-person narrators.