(bolding added)
As noted by others, I’ve seen different styles for i/this writer/this paper. But **Hilarity’s **point was universally drilled into me. You don’t say you’re going to try or attempt; you do it. I know it’s too late for this paper, but that to me seemed like the style error worth fixing.
I would like to reiterate my point, though, that this depends on the discipline we’re talking about. There’s surely something to it in the sciences, where researchers deal with objectives truth which can be proved (or at least falsified) and are, therefore, either objectively true or objectively untrue. In the humanities or in law, however, things are different; you can, in these areas, make up good arguments or bad arguments, but researchers will never claim (unless they’re pretentious) to have found objective truths. In this case, you don’t “prove” things, you only attempt to prove them; attempt, because a reader might not be convinced by your arguments, however strong you think they are.
Yes, you do what your professor wants. But I find it unlikely they require the specific use of “this writer” and he wouldn’t be better served by something else. I suspect the professor teaches merely that “this writer” is an acceptable means to avoid saying “I.”
Plus, it’s highly likely that there is no need to say “I will attempt to prove” in any form. Unless the professor has mandated a very specific form that includes “this writer will attempt to prove,” I would not use that construction. I would just make the claim directly, without the weasel words.
For example, in my English class, never wrote, “This writer will attempt to prove that Hamlet’s father is really a demon from hell,” but “This ghost cannot actually Hamlet’s father. He must be a demon from hell, sent to cause Hamlet’s downfall.”
I even googled “this writer will try to prove” and the result is this thread and a PDF using it to refer to another writer. All the examples of just “this writer will prove” are also referring to a third person. While there may be places where “I” or some circumlocution is unavoidable, this is not it.
Sounds awful and of dubious grammartude. Makes me wince like hearing someone state that “At the conference Bill, June, and myself were in attendance”.
Another reason why “I” is often not necessary is that personal opinions are not usually relevant to scientific research. For example, you can be the most militant Young-Earth Creationist in the world and still feel comfortable writing a Bio paper saying, “These results indicate a high likelihood that the seven-toed arachnosupial developed from the five-toed transsupial between three and five million years ago.” You might not personally believe it, but it’s what your study tended to indicate, and that’s what you report. Perhaps someone will later find more evidence to prove you wrong. But that’s fine, it’s Science ™.
The dislike for “I” and “me” stemmed from the belief that subjects worthy of study should be studied from an “objective” vantage point, one not distorted or colored or shaped by where one’s own personal feet were planted.
That belief is a crock of shit. The intention behind it is quite admirable but a serious philosophical consideration for the situation as it actually is doesn’t permit it:
• Every perception is to a perceiver.
• A good scientist can try to use equipment that seems to generate repeatable results that are also less variable in what they perceive than individual people’s eyes and ears and whatnot, but that evaluation (that the equipment does indeed do that) is a perception (and hence to a perceiver) and the equipment’s output has to be read (perceived) (hence to a perceiver), so although the concerns can be ameliorated, it is pretentious and, more important, inaccurate, to represent what one is doing as if there were no perceiver involved.
• Therefore a clearer and sharper paper that conveys more information more accurately does locate the author — as researcher, as theorist, as member of a team, as analyst of the experimental data, as architect of the experimental design, as author of the paper and member of the professional society in whose journal it is to be published — with feet on the ground somewhere, with intentions and purpose, with expectations, with considerations being taken into account and so forth.