It is a style thing, and personal pronouns and active voice is a superior style.
Better to lose a couple of marks from one dumb prof than learn bad writing habits.
That’s nice but style is still opinion and nobody’s opinion is better than anyone else’s as long as the result is good. Even constructions you hate can be used well by a good author.
I disagree strongly.
I think it is useful to recognize that it is a style thing, and there are advantages to being able to write in more than one style.
But I think it is also useful to be able to recognize that sometimes doing something the way that makes your boss (or your boss’s boss) happy is better than doing it “right”.
(And other times, doing it right is more important, and you decide to become a whistle-blower).
This is very cheap and easy advice to give to others. When you’re the student who has to write the essay that will be marked by the “dumb prof”, a more useful bit of advice would be: Better to bite the bullet and use a writing style that you don’t like, but that doesn’t really hurt you either, than to miss a couple of marks which are easy to get and which might later screw up your cumulative average if you don’t get them simply because you dislike the prof’s writing style.
The construction’s history is what is wanted, i.e., what is the latest history on it, and is it in the ‘appropriate’ category, or not.
More on the question: It seemed to me that most of the professor’s that I have had recently, have objected to any kind of “this writer” “this paper” etc… as it was uncomfortably superfluous; obviously, one doesn’t need any clarification as to which paper is being read in this paper, and who else would be writing in “this paper” unless it was this writer?
It does add a certain degree of modesty, though. This might come in handy if the results you arrive at deviate to some extent from the pre-existing predominant view. In this scenario (which is, possibly, more of an issue in areas like the humanities or law where there is no objective truth as in the sciences, only well-reasoned or poorly reasoned arguments), adding statements like these support the impression that you don’t claim to have overhauled the state of the art; you’re just adding a new thought to a debate that’s been going on since before you joined.
I haven’t been there for a long time, but oddly enough, I recall “this Troper” being a super popular phrase on TV Tropes for some reason.
However, TV Tropes articles are each written by multiple anonymous authors, so when you say “this Troper” in that context you are distinguishing yourself from the other authors of the article – especially if your opinion differs from that of others.
You don’t need to do that in an academic article, unless there are several authors who disagree on some point. That situation would rarely occur; and if it did, you’d need to indicate which specific authors are raising points of disagreement
And that seems to be well-answered.
Summarizing the posts to date, the answer is: “It is increasingly archaic, but not yet universally regarded as so. The leading edge of current style says never to use it, the trailing edge says always to use it, and every gradation of opinion between those extremes exists in someone or some authority somewhere.”[sup]1[/sup]
And the practical advice for the OP’s friend is to do whatever the boss/prof wants, while being aware of the style continuum I just cited.
Asking for more than this is IMO pointless.
[sup]1. Ref robert_columbia up-thread I unsplit those infinitives and boy does that sentence now archaically scan.[/sup]
Always avoid alliteration.
This Doper says it doesn’t matter what WE think. If the professor says that’s the style he wants, that’s the style your friend had better use!
My area is mathematics, and in all of my papers (and, indeed, all the other ones I’ve seen) I’ve used ‘we’ instead in similar situations: “In the first section, we give a partial proof of the Florple Conjecture,” or, “We can thus now prove the Blackacre Hypothesis.” (This has nothing to do with the number of authors.) It would seem weird to use ‘I’ there, and ‘this writer’ would sound completely ridiculous and pretentious. It’s also common to use an imperative style: “Take X to be a finite prime,” or, “Recall that this result was proved under the assumption of smoothness in [Klaatu, Barada, Nikto 1951].”
n/m
If it was good enough for Wodehouse, it’s good enough for your professor. He may not know that, though, and Wodehouse isn’t around to help you with your grade appeal.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always been taught to refer to the work and not to the writer.
It’s hard to avoid using some form of first-person construction when you’re referring to previous work you’ve done. Yeah, it’s a little awkward to say “In our previous paper (Chronos et al. 2013), we found…”, but it’s even more so to say “they” there.
I believe that this is based on the idea that a scientific paper isn’t supposed to be about the author, but about the author’s findings.
Compare:
“I added ten milliliters of potassium citrate.”
“My sister added ten milliliters of potassium citrate.”
“Some drunken frat boys added ten milliliters of potassium citrate.”
“Herbert Hornswaddle, III, BA, DDS, PDQ, Esq., of North-by-Northwest Eastern Podunk (Southern Zone) added ten milliliters of potassium citrate.”
“The editor’s mom added ten milliliters of potassium citrate.”
Do any of the above statements have different scientific ramifications? No? So why not just say:
“Ten milliliters of potassium citrate were added.”
The important thing is that the author is vouching, on their honor, that 10mL was actually added. Whether they performed the motions themselves or supervised someone else doing it, they are saying, hey, this happened. Let’s get on with it.
Don’t be a cad-
It’s always bad.
At writing time,
In any clime,
Don’t ever rhyme.
beep This AI disapproves but agrees that fleshy students should use whatever the grading unit wants beep
beep Then disintegrate the grading unit with a 1.21 gigawatt photon cannon beep
As Robert_Columbia illustrates, it is so rarely necessary to reference yourself because it almost never adds any value. I do see “we” from time to time in papers I’m reviewing for a conference / journal. I have used “In our prior work [#],” and yes it could be rephrased but I find helps to make it clear to the reader the level of familiarity I have with it as I am one of the authors.
I once watched a documentary about boot camp in the United States Marine Corps and the recruits were interviewed on camera towards the end of their basic training. They all answered questions about themselves by starting their sentences with “This recruit has learned that … ” or “This recruit thinks … ”. I wonder what that was all about.
Bingo. There could be cases where it does matter who actually did something if high-level skills are required. E.g. “John P. Robinson, MD, performed the brain surgery and Newton E. Finkleton, MS, PhD, LClPsy, performed the psychological assessment revealing homicidal tendencies.” reveals more than “Brain surgery was performed and homicidal tendencies were detected using a psychological assessment.” Anyone, however, can add 10mL of something to something else with basic supervision from a researcher.