Re: Academic writing third person personal anecdotes

Nicola Smith — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 14:03:52 GMT

Thankyou!! That makes perfect sense :)

Re: Academic writing third person personal anecdotes

Louise B — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 11:08:40 GMT

[quote user="NickyVN"]

Hi. Can anyone help. I am writing an assignment where i need to include personal anecdotes but it all needs to be written in third person. Is it acceptable to say 'in the authors experience' or 'the author has' or is there any better way of doing it. Looked on academic writing sites and no use as the advice they give isnt for anecdotes personal to one person.

[/quote]

Hi Nicky, I mark uni assignments all the time and this is how I advise people to do it based on scientific convention for publishing material.

There is no need to reference yourself in the reference list - the whole purpose of the reference list is to allow people to track down the source of any information cited. As the source cited is yourself, that is sufficient.

The only time when you would reference information that you have attributed to yourself is when that work is previously in print (e.g. if you have previously published an article in the VN Times and were now referring to that, you would cite it (authors, date MUST be included even if you also state in the sentence something like "in previous work by the author") and reference it fully.

When referring to anecdotal information that you have observed/experienced, something like:

Anecdotally,...

In the author's experience....

The author has observed....

Clients rarely comply when cats are difficult to handle (author's own observations)....

One thing worth considering is whether, when referencing yourself, you have enough credibility for the statement you make. I.e. if anyone picks up your paper/essay/report, do they know you are a RVN without knowing you personally? It is worth, the first time you cite yourself, stating something like:

In the author's (registered veterinary nurse, twenty years in general practice) experience.....

That would just be me being a bit nit picky though and other markers might not be this critical.

Re: Academic writing third person personal anecdotes

lorena hall — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 10:22:00 GMT

That sounds feasible to me. If you can reference yourself at the end (ref case studies, previous assignments) then do that also. Does it suggest you include personal anecdotes in your title/hypothesis? Either way... can you find a referenced example of that same experience, if that make sense which will back it up too.