: Re: When is it acceptable to refer to an undefined group of people in academic writing? Within my students' college writing, I found much writing referring to essentially imaginary, or not well-defined

@Holmes449

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When is it acceptable to refer to an undefined group of people in academic writing? I'd say only when such group has been defined previously in the text.

Academic writing is about specificity. Think of dictionary definitions. What makes a definition valid? That it can only be applied to that particular thing you are referring to (you wouldn't define a rat as a 4-legged creature, because a cat is also a 4-legged creature).
In the same 'spirit', I wouldn't define something I'm describing with generic terms, unless I have defined it before, usually in the introduction. Perhaps that would be a useful reasoning to tell your students.

"In this essay I will analyse the incidence of increasing gas prices
on German IT technicians carpooling to work (...) Carpoolers changed their behavior after the second rise in prices..."

I see "These days, more and more people carpool to work" as a valid statement in a magazine / newspaper article. As mentioned in this answer, for academic writing, it's too vague. What people? When? Even if the statement has an attached note (Person, 1984), 'more an more people' or 'some people' are still not good subjects. In my opinion, they need to be defined more specifically, so the statements that contain them can stand by themselves.

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