"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

[canaana.livejournal.com]

I don't think this was ever formally addressed in any course I ever took at any grade level. But I find that, without its being directly addressed, I was trained never to use "I." I have not seen "this author" in any modern academic writing that I'm familiar with--the convention I'm familiar with is to use "one," e.g. "One almost believes that . . . "

I suspect this may vary from field to field. I can't imagine certain academic papers in Sociology struggling onward without the use of "I," as the researcher may be presenting references to her own research, and I'm under the impression that "this author" is terribly out of vogue. But I'm definitely out of my field on that one--literary analysis is always focused on the work that you're analyzing, so it doesn't really come up.