Dissertation Write Up Style

[Emily D]

A couple of us were just chatting and we’re wondering what’s the most appropriate/expected voice style for the dissertation write up. Is first person acceptable, or is passive voice preferred? Or something else altogether?

[Simon]

This is a matter of personal style, and there is no hard-and-fast rule. Passive is safe and formal for scientific writing, but can be boring, verbose, hard to parse and sometimes ambiguous regarding who actually came up with ideas and did the work.

First person is acceptable, although you probably don’t want to overdue this because it will read too much like a diary. So, just use first person when you need to make it clear that an idea was yours, or that you actually did the work.

A common choice in scientific writing is to use “We” instead of “I”, even for single-author papers, although this is not necessarily a good thing because it’s ambiguous about whether the author had outside help.

As always, Grammar Girl is worth a look:

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/active-voice-versus-passive-voice?page=2

and her tip about using active voice without the first person (e.g. “The data suggest that…”) is excellent advice.

If you want to follow a style guide (definitely not formally required for your dissertation!), then APA is a good default

http://www.apastyle.org

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