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When addressing an unknown adult, writers of French refer to their reader with the pronoun VOUS. The paper compares this situation to that of Italian, which may call on a variety of pronouns. It goes on to analyse a small number of cases, drawn from a corpus of advertisements and reviews, where a written use of the French pronoun TU is in evidence. Uses of TU are found to be of three types: those directed to an addressee other than the reader, the generic TU, and those directed to the reader. It is noted that a TU addressed to the reader may often be read as belonging to one of the other two categories. Fixed expressions containing the pronoun TU are shown to constitute a further strategy for using this form of address.