Voice

VOICE

Because voice is difficult to measure reliably, it is often left out of scoring formulas for writing tests. Yet voice is an essential element of style that reveals the writer’s personality. A writer’s voice can be impersonal or chatty, authoritative or reflective, objective or passionate, serious or funny.

When you are writing an academic essay, especially in an English Course, there is one key point that you must always remember about VOICE:

It’s not about you, it’s about the reader

What works for one person might not work for the next, and so to reach the largest audience, it is best to write in 3^rd person voice for that distanced, objective quality of writing.

I’m sure that at some point in your academic writing career you have heard about ‘voice,’ but more than likely it was confusing to you as the instructor threw out terms such as 1^st person, 2^nd person, and 3^rd person voice.

There is more to voice than just the pronoun usage in the writing, but we must start there.

1^st Person Voice

1^st person voice will NOT be used in academic writing—unless—your instructor specifically states that it will work for the assignment.  1^st person voice is when you refer to yourself—in 1^st person—using “I,” “Me,” or “My”.  This type of voice can work for a narrative-style essay, and if done well, can hold a reader’s attention as you retell your narration (story).  The reason 1^st person is acceptable in narration is because it is about you—a story—and if it is written in 3^rd person point of view, it comes off awkward and strange.

When writing in the Discussion Boards for our class, you will often use 1^st person voice, and this is perfectly fine.  You are reflecting on a reading, an advertisement, a writing, or a video.  However, when you are presenting your feelings and ideas and you bring the resources to defend why you feel that way, you must shift to 3^rd person voice.  I highly suggest practicing 3^rd person voice as often as you can.  However, when writing from the personal perspective, 1^st person voice works well.  A Discussion Board post is NOT an essay.  Even though I will remind you time and time again to write in our 3-PART SYSTEM (introduction, body, and conclusion paragraphs), this does not mean that you are crafting an essay.  This means that you are crafting a writing the leads in, presents, and leads out.  No matter your field, you will always write in a 3-PART SYSTEM.

2^nd Person Voice

2^nd person voice will NOT be used in academic writing—unless—your instructor specifically assigns you a participation post or peer review.  When responding to a classmate, you know him/her.  There is a familiarity due to shared interests and classwork.  However, when you are writing an academic essay and the “YOU” pops up, it is awkward, and it takes the reader from being in your world of words to your reader now thinking about themselves.

When writing in the Discussion Boards for our class, you will often use 2^nd person voice, and this is perfectly fine.  You are reflecting on a reading, an advertisement, a writing, or a video while addressing your classmate.  However, when you are presenting your feelings and ideas, responding specifically to a question or comment you classmate posted, and then you bring in the resources to defend why you feel that way, you must shift to 3^rd person voice. 

Please remember that a Discussion Board post is NOT an essay.  Even though I will remind you time and time again to write in our 3-PART SYSTEM (introduction, body, and conclusion paragraphs), this does not mean that you are crafting an essay.  This means that you are crafting a writing the leads in, presents, and leads out.  No matter your field, you will always write in a 3-PART SYSTEM.

3^rd Person Voice

3^rd person voice is the STANDARD writing style for voice in scholarly, academic writing.  The goal with 3^rd person voice is to write as if you were giving a presentation.  You do not know the readers (therefore, no use of YOU—which is 2^nd person voice), and the readers do not know you (therefore, no use of I-, Me-, or My-type pronouns).  You write ‘from a distance’.

Example: Proponents for proposition 219 argue for changes to 
the sanitation of our public water sources.

Can you feel how I am writing about THEM, THEY, and so on, even though those words were never actually used?  There is a distance in the writing, and it is through this distance that a reader is able to focus on the content of the writing and not get wrapped up in who you are…I, Me, My, Us, We…or feel weird that you keep referring to YOU. 

To make sure that you have not fallen into the trap of using 1^st or 2^nd person voice in your writings, it is best to go to the top right of your MO Word document screen and click on the FIND or the REPLACE tabs.  These tabs will let you search for those dreaded works like I or YOU and modify your sentence to reflect 3^rd person voice.


Links to Help with VOICE

1. How to Identify 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Person Voice
2. Why 3rd Person Voice is Critical to an Essay
3. Ways to Switch From 1st to 3rd person Voice

Additional Ways to Understand Style

from Paola Brown's Student Learning Tools

Point of View: 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Person
Point of View: Using 1st & 3rd Person in Formal Essays
*Watch part 3 of 4 in the YouTube Video. You can also view this section as a PDF document.
Style: Spoken vs. Written Voice

1st Person Voice in Other Fields of Writing
Here are some suggestions about including personal experience in writing for specific fields:

·         Philosophy: In philosophical writing, your purpose is generally to reconstruct or evaluate an existing argument, and/or to generate your own. Sometimes, doing this effectively may involve offering a hypothetical example or an illustration. In these cases, you might find that inventing or recounting a scenario that you’ve experienced or witnessed could help demonstrate your point. Personal experience can play a very useful role in your philosophy papers, as long as you always explain to the reader how the experience is related to your argument. (See our handout on writing in philosophy for more information.)

·         Religion: Religion courses might seem like a place where personal experience would be welcomed. But most religion courses take a cultural, historical, or textual approach, and these generally require objectivity and impersonality. So although you probably have very strong beliefs or powerful experiences in this area that might motivate your interest in the field, they shouldn’t supplant scholarly analysis. But ask your instructor, as it is possible that he or she is interested in your personal experiences with religion, especially in less formal assignments such as response papers. (See our handout on writing in religious studies for more information.)

·         Literature, Music, Fine Arts, and Film: Writing projects in these fields can sometimes benefit from the inclusion of personal experience, as long as it isn’t tangential. For instance, your annoyance over your roommate’s habits might not add much to an analysis of “Citizen Kane.” However, if you’re writing about Ridley Scott’s treatment of relationships between women in the movie “Thelma and Louise,” some reference your own observations about these relationships might be relevant if it adds to your analysis of the film. Personal experience can be especially appropriate in a response paper, or in any kind of assignment that asks about your experience of the work as a reader or viewer. Some film and literature scholars are interested in how a film or literary text is received by different audiences, so a discussion of how a particular viewer or reader experiences or identifies with the piece would probably be appropriate. (See our handouts on writing about fiction, art history, and drama for more information.)

·         Women’s Studies: Women’s Studies classes tend to be taught from a feminist perspective, a perspective which is generally interested in the ways in which individuals experience gender roles. So personal experience can often serve as evidence for your analytical and argumentative papers in this field. This field is also one in which you might be asked to keep a journal, a kind of writing that requires you to apply theoretical concepts to your experiences.

·         History: If you’re analyzing a historical period or issue, personal experience is less likely to advance your purpose of objectivity. However, some kinds of historical scholarship do involve the exploration of personal histories. So although you might not be referencing your own experience, you might very well be discussing other people’s experiences as illustrations of their historical contexts. (See our handout on writing in history for more information.)

·         Sciences: Because the primary purpose is to study data and fixed principles in an objective way, personal experience is less likely to have a place in this kind of writing. Often, as in a lab report, your goal is to describe observations in such a way that a reader could duplicate the experiment, so the less extra information, the better. Of course, if you’re working in the social sciences, case studies—accounts of the personal experiences of other people—are a crucial part of your scholarship. (See our handout on writing in the sciences for more information.)

The information above in BLUE is distributed under the Creative Common license.  It was Created BY KATHLEEN CALI for LEARN NC.  Go to the hyperlink to reach the original resource on the Learn NC website.