Using personal nouns in essays

Running Bing

Something we are continuously told not to do is when writing an essay never use terms like "I will show", "we will investigate" etc.


Yet academic papers I read seem to do it all the time. Why is this? Is it a case of having to earn your salt before you can refer to yourself in a paper? Is it alright for a Phd to do it but not an undergad?

I find it quite annoying as it is so common in academic papers it just feels natural when Im writing an essay.

claire h

Babybing wrote: »

Is it a case of having to earn your salt before you can refer to yourself in a paper?

Partly, yeah.

It's bad academic writing (and there is plenty out there, at all levels) to use personal pronouns as a way of saying 'This is what I think and I feel this is right and I'm not really going to back it up', regardless of what stage you're at; I have a sneaking suspicion they feel that undergrads are more likely to do this than Proper Academics.

I don't think it's that common in academic papers, though; occasional usage is one thing (and which should be OK at any level, but markers can be picky about such things) but if it's turning up all the time that'd put me off. If every second sentence is 'I think...' or 'In my opinion...' that's bad academic writing no matter who's doing it.

(This is coming from an arts/humanities background, from what I know of sciencey stuff it's supposed to be even less personal - the research and results should stand on their own.)

Running Bing

claire h wrote: »

Partly, yeah.

It's bad academic writing (and there is plenty out there, at all levels) to use personal pronouns as a way of saying 'This is what I think and I feel this is right and I'm not really going to back it up', regardless of what stage you're at; I have a sneaking suspicion they feel that undergrads are more likely to do this than Proper Academics.

I don't think it's that common in academic papers, though; occasional usage is one thing (and which should be OK at any level, but markers can be picky about such things) but if it's turning up all the time that'd put me off. If every second sentence is 'I think...' or 'In my opinion...' that's bad academic writing no matter who's doing it.

(This is coming from an arts/humanities background, from what I know of sciencey stuff it's supposed to be even less personal - the research and results should stand on their own.)

Cheers Claire, just to clarify I certainly dont use it all the time and when I said it was "common" I meant you see it appear once or twice per paper in a lot of papers rather than it cropping up all the time.



I use it in the intro and conclusion but I would not use it in the main body of the essay. The sort of thing would be

Intro:

"Blahblah blah. I will begin by showing yadda yadda yadda. I will then go on to look at blah blah blah before finally yadda yadda"

and that might be it until the conclusion where I would say something like:

Conclusion:


I begin by blahblahblah...it was shown that yadda yadda.


I use it very sparingly but I always get the impression its just a big no no and shouldnt be used at all. Maybe Im just being oversensitive about instructions though.

EamonnKeane

Correct English is considered to be "I shall", "we shall", all others "will"