"I" in academic and scholarly writing

[rm]

This is not a search for advice. This is a point of curiosity to me, because my education was sort of extreme and obsessive on this point, and it occurs to me that perhaps other fifth-graders were not scarred for life by writing papers that said things like "this author feels that Disney World would be an idea summer vacation destination for her family."

So, inquiring minds and all that....

[Poll #1563413]

Comments

[snakeling]

I majored in English in a French university, so my essays could be in either language. In English I used the passive voice extensively, but when I couldn't avoid the "I", I turned it into a "we". In French I sometimes used "on" (which btw is actually informal in French, unlike "one" in English), though I sometimes used "nous" (we) instead, because there are some turns of phrase with "on" that walk the fine line between "really awkward" and "grammatically wrong".

[eandh99.livejournal.com]

"On" to mean "nous" is informal, though increasingly commonplace. On as the impersonal subject has no such connotation that I'm aware of, though I would probably avoid the repetition of it in formal writing as I would avoid the repetition of any element, which is where the pronominal construction really offers an endless variety of options.