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

Traditionally it was recommended not to use first 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". Here, the author is including the reader in the argument.

But, it is better not use "we" when you are the sole author of an article.  There is not really an "academic we" in English. It is better to use "I", or another subject such as "This research examines...", "This article discusses...". That said, some texts do use "we" if there is only one writer.

If you use "I" or "we" ("my", "our", etc.) do not use them too much.

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 third person singular pronouns: i.e. he, she, his and her. Generally speaking, just using male personal pronouns (he, his) sounds very conservative nowadays. Quite often, researchers today just use female personal pronouns (she, her), although this may sound quite strongly feminist for some people. It is up to you to choose.

For myself, I prefer to use both: "she/he" or "her/his", putting the woman's pronoun first.. This is a bit clumsy, but it very clearly acknowledges that impersonal "agents" in a text may just as often be women as men.