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Does it bother anyone else that the paper has a single author and yet throughout they refer to themselves as “we”?
by theli0nheart 5y ago
Does it bother anyone else that the paper has a single author and yet throughout they refer to themselves as “we”?
- tobr 5y agoJust speaking for ourselves, it doesn’t bother us.
- dimitrios1 5y agoThey likely had at least one research assistant, proofreaders, etc. Maybe the author is attempting to distribute credit and lead the reader to infer there was just more than one person involved.
- klyrs 5y agoNo. Many scientific papers are written in third person. "We" actually means "me or us the author(s) and you the reader who is following along and checking these details"
- dimitrios1 5y agoOr, yes. I worked as a research assistant gathering data for a professor at University who wrote 100s of papers in the area of graphics and computer vision.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Foxboron 5y agoIt's intentional and normal. Academic papers traditionally write in plural form (regardless of co-authors) as it feels more inclusive towards the reader.
- crote 5y agoThe author neglected to mentioned F. D. C. Willard as co-author, obviously.
- NoGravitas 5y agoOr Galadriel Mirkwood.
- ReactiveJelly 5y agoI've started using "the royal we" in my company's internal wiki so that hopefully readers won't think too hard about who the author was. In my case, I'm worried about new employees thinking, "Oh this is Jelly's page, I can't edit it."
- masklinn 5y agoExactly, it’s less of a royal we and more of an inclusive / humbling we: I might be the author but I’m writing on behalf of and under the aegis of the group / organisation, so it’s our content not mine alone.
- OscarCunningham 5y agoThis is common in some fields. My understanding of it is that 'we' means 'the author(s) and the reader'. You'll sometimes see this voice changing when the author(s) give their own opinion. e.g. > From this we can see that XYZ. It is the author's opinion that ABC.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]