OBJECTIVITY

You would not think of writing e-mail or a letter to a friend without

using the first-person singular I, me, or my. If you were writing a letter to
an editor or an essay in which it is appropriate and important to claim
opinions and feelings as your own, you would, of course, use the first-
person singular: I think, my opinion.

The following paragraphs are taken from a Labor Day (2 September

1999) editorial by Jeff Rivers in the Hartford Courant:

[My parents] were workers, union people, assembly lines and lunch
pails, typing pools and greasy-spoon hot dogs. They worked as hard
as they could for as long as they could. They gave out under the
strain of their lives and dropped in the dust. Neither lived to be 60
years old.

Because of my parents' hard work, I walked along a less rocky path,

which was their dream.

My parents were walkers. When I was a boy in Philadelphia, I'd go on

long walks with one and then the other. When the three of us walked
together, the trips were always short and full of purpose, like my
parents' lives. But when I walked with just one of my parents, the
trips sometimes became grand explorations of the city and life.

Rivers then goes on to tell us how his father would point out day
laborers to his son, hinting broadly that his son should grow up to work
with his mind, not his hands: "'Don't be like them, don't be like me.' . . .
He wanted me to grow up to use my mind rather than my hands in
work. I have, which was my dad's dream." And from there, Rivers goes
on to say that today's workers have become more like microchips than
mules, but they are still not valued the way they ought to be. Rivers'
conclusion about society is allowed to grow out of his initial personal
reflection; it feels personally justified.

Please note, though, that the very short paragraphs are appropriate for
newspaper writing, but that academic text would undoubtedly gather
many of those small paragraphs into larger units.
 On the other hand, to avoid any hints of subjective bias or a "this is
just little of me talking" tone, most academic prose should feel as
objective as possible. One easy test of objectivity in writing is the use of the
first-person singular. Text in which I shows up over and over again will feel
weighted with subjectivity, not objectivity. In the personal essay and the
letter to Grandma, that is perfectly all right, and a personal essay without I's
can feel oddly detached and cold. In objective, academic prose, however,
that sense of detachment is often exactly what is called for.
Here is the introductory paragraph to a brief article in the online version
of the September 1999 Atlantic Monthly:

The Kansas school board's recent decision to drop evolution from the
state's required curriculum represents the latest episode in an
ongoing battle between religious fundamentalists and secular
educators over whether public schools should teach "creation science"
or evolutionor both. The Kansas school board claims that because
evolution cannot be replicated in a laboratory, and thus cannot be
directly observed, it should only be presented as theory rather than as
fact. As a mere theory, they argue, it should be omitted from the
curriculum or presented alongside other, competing "theories"
(namely, creationism). Educators and scientists troubled by the
Kansas decision point out that many scientific assumptionslike the
existence of atoms cannot be directly observed in a laboratory, but
are accepted because they are supported by the best scientific
evidence.