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Originally Posted by manganimefan227
So THAT'S what's so wrong about あなた! OK, I'm not sure what you mean by "direct" though . . .Is it just more respectful to say something like
としろさんはなんさいですか instead of using あなた?
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Compare; "Hey, you dropped this." with "Excuse me, but I think you may have dropped something,"
One is direct; it's assertive and fingers a person explicitly as the cause of an action. "You dropped". The other is passive, indirect and gives lea-way for excuse. "I think you may have". And it's automatically more polite.
Or; "I hate Mr. Yamada." with "I wouldn't really say Mr. Yamada is my favourite person." The second one skirts the issue.
With friends and family, it's ok to be that direct, but you wouldn't really say stuff like that to your boss, or people you don't know, right? It's the same in Japanese.
And as everyone's already said, always use a name if you can.