Personal and Impersonal Styles in Scientific Communications

Abstract

DELIBERATELY encouraged by some editors, though not, I am assured, by the Editor of NATURE, a prejudice is growing against the use of the first person in scientific writings. If it were part of a more general prejudice against the increasing egotism of scientists (manifested, for example, in squabbles over priority and the assignment of credit), it would be admirable, though probably futile. But it is not; it is merely the stylistic fad of the moment, and is wholly contemptible. Truly, it is not well to be always saying ‘I’; but there is no virtue, moral or literary, in the mechanical substitution of the third person for the first. The literary vice is not the repetition of pronouns or of any pronoun in particular; it is needless repetition in general; pronouns are mentioned specifically only because it is particularly tempting to repeat them too often. It is very much worse to repeat a cumbrous and artificial phrase than to repeat a pronoun; and when we find our pages, sedulously cleared o‘I’s,' besprinkled with ‘he present writer’ and ‘the author of the present paper,’ it is surely time to protest against a Pharisaical misinterpretation of the Law.