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7.7 For journals that allow personal forms, use we to

distinguish yourself from other authors
The simplest way to make a distinction between your results and other authors’ is to
use we – provided that your journal allows you to do this. Using we would make
Wordsworth’s Discussion (see 7.6 ) much clearer for the reader.

Blake investigated children from the US and Canada, whereas we studied children in
Europe. We conducted an extensive search for bilingual children in ten European countries

and identified 149 children (Table 1). One hundred and twenty two children with parents of
different nationalities were assigned to a group (hereafter Group A). We found that those
children with parents of the same…
The above revision highlights how making contrasts between what you did and
what others did is much simpler when you use we . However, you don’t want to
begin each sentence with we , as this would be monotonous for your readers. So you
can use a mixture of active ( we found ) and passive ( it was found ).

Only use the passive to describe your work if you have clearly established that
now you are talking about your work. You can do this by using we or in our study
at the beginning of a paragraph – this alerts the reader that you are going to
discuss your work, so even if you then use the passive the reader still knows that
it is your work. If you then introduce someone else’s work, make sure that the
next time you talk about your own work again you begin the sentence with we or
in our study.

7.8 When we is acceptable, even when you are not
distinguishing yourself from other authors

When you describe your methodology or a procedure that you have followed, it is
perfectly acceptable to use we or the passive, or a mixture of the two. This is illus-
trated in the example below.

We selected the candidates on the basis of an initial test in which they were asked to do a
short simultaneous translation. The candidates were then divided into two groups: bilin-
guals and trilinguals. Candidates then underwent a second test … We then used the results
of these tests to further divide the candidates into four subgroups.

The extract above could be rewritten all in the passive. However, the advantage of
beginning the description of the procedure using we is that it makes it clear to the
reader that unless stated, otherwise the rest of the paragraph refers to what you did
rather than another author.