: Re: Can I use "We" to refer to me and the reader? I am writing my thesis and in many cases I want to take the reader through an example. For example: Besides the advanced composition rules,

I think the answer for this is going to depend on your audience. "I" and "We" are both first person, and the use of first person is usually considered more casual, and not suited for formal writing in many academic fields. But I think this rule is relaxing, and your instructor may or may not want you to follow it. I'd check.

Assuming you're allowed to use first person, my personal preference would be to use "I". "We" is more vague - who are "we", exactly, and why are you speaking for us?

You could also re-write this passage in third person: "For example, the artist may want to have a river across the diagonal of the frame and also to to have some animals near the river in the top-left corner of the frame. The diagonal dominance rule would apply to the river, but the other advanced rules cannot be of any use..."

In this case, I think the example you gave sounds like a personal reflection, while the rewrite sounds more like a statement of universal truths. Which effect are you going for?

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: Re: Can I use "We" to refer to me and the reader? I am writing my thesis and in many cases I want to take the reader through an example. For example: Besides the advanced composition rules,

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: What methods can I use to revise my writing? Background I am finding it challenging to transform an early draft into a finished product. My biggest challenges are putting the prose in the

: One of the classic books for scientific writing is Dey's "How to write and publish a scientific paper". It gives almost step by step instructions for writing and publishing a research paper,

: Is there anything wrong with saying "Thanks" several times in the same email? If not, how could I correct it? E.g. here is an email I just sent: Hello X, Okay I see - thanks

: How do I balance work with my love of writing? I'm a programmer and an aspiring writer. I love writing. Over the past year, I had been working on my first novel. Making the plot, dimensioning

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