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It is generally courtesy to use the plural 'we' or 'our' in papers, even when the primary author was the only contributor. While using personal pronouns in academic papers is typically a very bad idea, I have seen them being used in theses. What gives? Technically a PhD thesis is only meant to be the candidate's work, but if this work features previously published work surely you'd expect to same rules to apply to the thesis as applied to the academic papers?

So in terms of professional appearance and etiquette what is the (typically) correct approach? Should personal pronouns be used in a thesis?

Stumbler
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    There are so many questions about this on this site. To the extent that this isn't a duplicate, it's primarily opinion based. If you want to be on the safe side, do whatever your thesis advisor tells you. – henning Jun 16 '19 at 16:41
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    @henning I have never heard of a thesis being called a paper before. – Stumbler Jun 16 '19 at 16:42
  • The same reasoning applies across different academic works, but you'll easily find a question about the choice of pronoun in theses. This is is just a particulary instructive example. – henning Jun 16 '19 at 16:46
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    Here's another one: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/58045/how-to-decide-whether-i-should-use-we-in-an-essay?r=SearchResults and yet another: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11659/using-first-person-or-third-person-in-papers and here's one specifically about theses: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/71887/are-the-words-i-we-us-his-her-he-she-all-prohibited-in-thesis-writing?r=SearchResults – henning Jun 16 '19 at 17:08
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    Here's another specifically about theses: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/98616/when-to-use-i-in-a-masters-thesis – Anyon Jun 16 '19 at 21:21
  • We / our can mean (at least) the author and the reader, possibly the broader community, or even serve as universal quantifiers, e.g., we [meaning everyone in the world] can now see that... – user2768 Jun 17 '19 at 07:16

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I used “we” (except for the acknowledgements). It’s what I’m used to when reading academic writing. Anything else wold seem weird to me.

Although the primary reason was that It was a stapler thesis and that is what the papers I was copying from used. It would have been too much effort to change it.

Customs may vary by field and country. The best thing to do is look at a few theses coming from your department and copy their style.

Thomas
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