28 3 Mechanics of Writing
The agricultural reforms have been seen to be successful, which has led to a surge in agri-
cultural production and productivity, contributing to higher savings and investment, and the
release of large amounts of labour for employment in emerging rural industry, notably town
and village enterprises (Wheeler and Still 1992).Notice that it is not clear who saw that the reforms were successful. Even by the
end of the sentence it is not clear whether Wheeler and Still saw that they were suc-
cessful, or whether they stated that the consequent surge in agricultural production
released labour for other activities, or both. Using the active voice forces you to
clarify, as in this revision:
Chou and Yung (1991) showed that these agricultural reforms had led to increases in
both agricultural production and productivity. Wheeler and Still (1992) claim that this
increased productivity released labour for emerging rural industry, notably town and vil-
lage enterprises.Note that using ‘showed’ rather than ‘have been seen’ enables me to avoid using the
vague word ‘successful’, because I now define it, and know exactly who did what.
Note also that I have made Wheeler and Still the subject of the second sentence,
rather than just being a reference at the end of it, so the reader knows who was draw-
ing the conclusion about the effects of increased productivity.
Use of the First Person
As the structures of science—papers, reviews, disciplines, and so on—became elab-
orated during the nineteenth century, the idea developed that science was imperson-
al, that a scientist was a disinterested observer of the unfolding of new knowledge.
It followed that scientific researchers could not claim any personal credit (or even
display excitement) over their discoveries when they came to report them. Theses,
reports and scientific papers had to be written in the third person, as if someone else
had made the discovery. To remove the presence of the writer from the text, scien-
tists resorted to use of the passive voice.
Originally scientists wrote perfectly clearly in the first person: ‘I observed that
...’ or ‘We observed that ...’ But over time, they began to use the third person: ‘The
researcher observed that ...’, or, if this wasn’t clear enough, the incorrect—and
confusing—‘This researcher [which one?] observed that ...’; or often the awkward
‘The present writer observed that ...’ Worse, they began to use the passive voice: ‘It
was observed that ...’, or, since the use of the passive may prevent us from know-
ing who observed, ‘It was observed by the present writer that ...’ Using eight words
where three did the job very well is one of the building blocks of thesiese.
This tendency has never been as bad in the humanities, where authors are al-
lowed to take positions, and the first-person, active voice is permissible and some-
times even encouraged. Nevertheless, writers in the humanities often hide behind
the anonymous third person.
When writing your thesis, what should you do? A thesis examiner may belong to
the old school. Rima decided to use the first person plural in her thesis: ‘We can see
that ...’, meaning, ‘I the writer and you the reader can see that ...’ I did not discour-