05 - "we", "I", "you", "one" -- "he/she"and "his/her"

Traditionally it was recommended not to use 1st person pronouns ("I" or "we") in academic literature. However, today it is increasingly possible to find these in texts.

This is especially so for the use of "we", which is now quite frequent when there are two or more authors of a text (otherwise "we" can also be used to bring the reader into to discussion, e.g., "... in the figure we can see that migration behaviour changed during the 1990s").

But, do not use "we" when you are the sole author of an article.  There is no "academic we" in English. It is better to use "I", or another subject such as "This research examines...", "This article discusses...".

For more information about this, please refer to the webpage here, published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Generally avoid using "one".  It very quickly becomes snobbish or old-fashioned.

In spoken English, you can use "you" as a general pronoun, as I am doing here. This is a bit like using "nous" in a general sense, when you are speaking in French.

It is sometimes necessary to use 3rd person singular pronouns: i.e. he, she, his and her. Generally speaking, just using male personal pronouns (he, his) sounds very conservative. On the other hand, just using female personal pronouns (she, her) sounds quite strongly feminist. It is up to you to choose.

For myself, I prefer to use both: "he/she" or "his/her". This is a bit clumsy, perhaps still a bit male-oriented, but it very clearly acknowledges that impersonal "agents" in a text may just as often be women as men.