Narrative perspective, person references, and evidentiality in clinical incident reports

•When agents are classed as culpable, pragmatic strategies used in reporting differ.•User error reports mask identity and agency through the third-person viewpoint.•Epistemic markers of uncertainty and precision characterise user error reports.•This reporting type statistically demonstrates a pattern we call precise ambiguity.•Level of patient harm does not affect pragmatic strategies in the corpora analysed.