I now have a name for my Friday series on writing questions/queries/quandries: Friday Free Writing. Just thought of it this morning as I was getting ready to go to daycare. (Inspiration strikes in the weirdest places; I just let it happen.)
So for today I’m riffing off of a conversation I had earlier this week with one of my tweeps about inserting “I”/ourselves in our writing. The use of “I” in academic writing is especially fraught. As a first-year composition instructor, I dealt week in and week out with the same question:
“Can I use ‘I’ in my paper?”
My gut reaction: “Of course you can!”
My maasured, professorial reaction: “Well, let’s think about this for a second…”
My gut reaction (“Of course you can!”) stems from the fact that I believe we can’t separate what we write from our selves. However, my measured, professorial reaction (“Let think about this”) stems from the fact that writers (not just students) need to understand what some of the guidelines of the writing game are before they go and do their own thing. Here is how I would break it down to my student-writers:
“Where Media Writing Begins” by Flickr user Bernard Goldback, CC-BY-2.0
♦Using “I” in academic writing is generally frowned upon, yes. That is a very traditional notion of academic writing. You probably heard it in high school, and you’ve probably heard it from other professors/academics. However, sometimes it doesn’t make sense to talk in passive voice or to pretend you’re talking about someone else (or worse, a general population) when you’re clearly talking about your point of view or something that happened to you. So go ahead and add it if it feels like the sentence doesn’t make sense without it.
♦Avoid the “I think/I feel/I believe” trap. Sometimes the first thing that pops in your head when writing is “I think that” or “I feel that.” Sometimes it’s warranted to underscore how you think or feel about the matter. But sometimes, depending on the genre, it’s obvious that what you’re writing is how you feel about a topic. So, during revision (that’s why we need drafts, folks!) highlight the passages where you use “I think”/”I feel”/”I believe.” Cut them out just for argument’s sake. Read the passage without it. Does it sound the same? It probably does. So leave it like that.
♦Think about your audience. Remember when I talked about “writing guidelines” above? I don’t like saying “writing rules” because it sounds like These Are The Rules and no one can do anything different. I prefer “guidelines” because it lends itself to the flexible nature of writing. This applies to using “I” in your writing. I told my students again and again, “I think it’s great if you use ‘I’ in your essay. But be aware that some professors don’t like that AT ALL.” So, say, if your audience for a certain piece is your professor, keep in mind if they dislike it when writers use “I.” If you’re writing for a trade publication, would that seem reasonable? More importantly, why are you using “I” in the first place?
I know, you probably came here looking for clear-cut answers, and here I go telling you to think about why you use “I.” But the truth is, writing is about the choices we make. The best guideline you can use in writing is to think about why you use the words/language you are using to convey something. You’re making choices far more often than you give yourself credit for.
Before I go, for funsies: I was looking for something funny online about using the pronoun “I” in your writing, but that failed. Instead, I’m sharing a new blog I discovered this week and that I like a lot; I enjoy it because of the quality of the information and because of the tone in which it is written. Enjoy AP vs. Chicago
Bonus track: Vampire Weekend’s “Step”
