Writing Essays in 3rd Person vs. 1st Person: When to Break the Rules

What “Third Person vs. First Person” Actually Means

Third person versus first person in essay writing is a decision about whether you, the writer, appear directly in your own sentences. Third person uses he, she, it, they, and named nouns — “the researcher found,” “Shakespeare portrays,” “the data suggests” — and removes the writer from the sentence entirely. First person uses I, me, my, we, us, our — “I argue,” “we found,” “my analysis shows” — and puts the writer visibly into the claim. UAGC’s Writing Center frames it simply: in third person the speaker never refers to themselves, while personal writing that uses “I” can also draw on personal opinions and anecdotes as supporting evidence.

That framing is a useful starting point, but it hides the real complexity most students actually face. The rule “use third person in academic writing” is taught as if it were universal, when in practice it is a strong default with real, well-documented exceptions. Nursing reflections, admissions essays, and even APA-formatted research papers all expect first person in specific sections. Treating the rule as absolute is exactly what causes students to either avoid “I” when their assignment requires it, or use “I” where their discipline strictly forbids it. Developing strong essay writing skills means learning to recognize which situation you’re in — not memorizing one rule for every assignment.

Where Does Second Person Fit In?

Second person — you, your, yours — is worth naming even though it rarely belongs in academic essays. According to Massey University’s academic writing guidance, second person is generally reserved for instructional or informal writing, such as how-to guides, rather than formal essays. If you catch yourself writing “you can see that the results support this,” that’s a second-person slip worth revising into either “this shows” (third person) or “I found” (first person), depending on your assignment’s expectations.

Why the “Always Use Third Person” Rule Exists

The convention has a real history. Academic writing developed a strong preference for third person because it was believed to sound more objective and universal — removing the individual writer’s voice supposedly let the evidence speak for itself. Writing Commons’ synthesis of professor perspectives observes that academic writers routinely name their sources in the third person — attributing an idea to a specific author rather than folding it into their own voice — which reinforces this convention across disciplines.

But that reasoning has been challenged directly by more recent editorial guidance. Editage’s editorial guide on academic point of view pushes back on that assumption directly, arguing that neither third person nor passive voice makes writing inherently more objective — both can simply hide who actually did what, which weakens rather than strengthens a claim’s clarity. This is the tension at the center of the whole debate: the old rule assumed objectivity requires invisibility, while current guidance increasingly treats clarity and transparency as more important than pronoun choice alone.

When Third Person Is the Correct Choice

For the large majority of college and university essays — argumentative essays, literary analysis, research papers, and literature reviews — third person remains the expected default. WITT’s Learning Resource Centre guide explains that third person dominates academic essay writing precisely because so much of that writing is about summarizing other people’s research — a task that naturally keeps the writer’s own presence out of the sentence.

Argumentative and Persuasive Essays

In most argumentative essay assignments, your job is to build a case from outside evidence — scholarly sources, data, expert testimony — rather than personal opinion. Third person keeps the focus on that evidence: “the data indicates” rather than “I think the data shows.” Persuasive essay writing techniques generally lean on this convention because a claim grounded in “the research demonstrates” reads as more evidence-driven than one grounded in “I believe.”

Literary Analysis and Research Papers

Literary analysis essays — the kind built around interpreting a novel, poem, or play — are almost always written in third person unless an instructor explicitly invites personal response. Compare: “Shakespeare’s play Hamlet deals with the relationships between family members” (third person) versus “I think Hamlet deals with family relationships” (first person). UAGC’s guidance favors the third-person version specifically because academic essays are meant to lean on credible outside sources to support an argument, rather than the writer’s own personal experience. The same logic extends to most research papers: your claims should rest on cited evidence, and third person signals that structurally.

Passive Constructions and Their Limits

Third person is often paired with passive voice — “the survey was distributed to 200 participants” instead of “I distributed the survey.” This can work well for describing established procedures. But passive third-person constructions can also make writing harder to follow by hiding who actually performed the action. If a sentence becomes vague about agency (“mistakes were made in the analysis”), that’s usually a sign the sentence needs either a named subject or a switch to first person — not just a synonym swap. The anatomy of a well-structured essay depends on clarity like this at the sentence level, not just the outline level.

When First Person Is Not Just Allowed, But Expected

This is the section most “always use third person” advice skips entirely, and it’s where students lose marks in both directions — either avoiding “I” in a reflective piece that requires it, or apologizing for using it in a research paper where it’s actually standard practice.

Reflective Essays and Journals

Reflective writing exists specifically to capture your own experience, reasoning, and growth — so first person isn’t an exception here, it’s the entire point. WITT’s guide illustrates this register with a short first-person passage describing a student’s first encounter with a patient and how it corrected an earlier assumption about that condition. Notice how the first-person voice is doing real analytical work there — naming a specific assumption and correcting it — not just narrating events. Reflective writing sharpens critical thinking precisely because it forces you to examine your own reasoning in first person, not describe someone else’s.

Nursing, Social Work, and Clinical Reflection Assignments

Nursing and social work programs frequently assign structured reflective models — Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle, Rolfe’s framework, Driscoll’s “What” model — that explicitly require first-person narration of a clinical or placement experience. Writing these in third person (“the student nurse observed”) instead of first person (“I observed”) usually reads as evasive rather than more professional, and often loses marks against a rubric built around personal reflection and self-awareness.

Personal Statements and Admissions Essays

Admissions essays are narrative by design — programs want to hear your voice, your specific experiences, and your reasoning, not a third-person account of “the applicant.” Crafting a strong Ivy League personal statement depends almost entirely on confident, specific first-person narration rather than the impersonal tone used in argumentative essays.

APA Style: The Exception Most Students Don’t Know About

This is the one that surprises the most students. UAGC’s Writing Center states this directly: APA guidance calls for first person when describing your own research study, and specifically advises against referring to yourself or your coauthors in the third person as “this author” or “these researchers.” In other words, if you’re writing an APA-formatted methods or discussion section and you write “the researcher analyzed the data” instead of “I analyzed the data,” you’re actually working against APA’s own current style guidance — not following it. Choosing the right citation and writing style means checking these discipline-specific rules rather than assuming one blanket policy covers every format.

Positionality and Reflexivity Statements

Editage’s guide makes an important point about qualitative and social-science research specifically: positionality and reflexivity statements, where a researcher acknowledges how their own background and assumptions shaped the work, are among the sections that essentially require first person — third person would make the passage sound absurd rather than more rigorous. If your dissertation or thesis includes a reflexivity statement, third person isn’t just discouraged there — it structurally doesn’t work.

The Gray Areas: When the Rules Genuinely Conflict

Most point-of-view confusion doesn’t come from the clear-cut cases above — it comes from situations where instructors, disciplines, and style guides disagree with each other, or where an assignment blends genres.

When Your Instructor’s Preference Overrides the General Rule

Every source consulted for this guide converges on the same practical advice, even while disagreeing on the theory. Writing Commons makes the same point plainly: check with the specific professor you’re writing for, since individual instructors genuinely differ on this issue. Massey University’s guide agrees, advising students who are unsure to check their assignment guidelines or ask their course coordinator directly rather than guess. If your rubric or instructor gives explicit guidance, that instruction outranks any general convention in this article — including APA’s own default.

Mixing First and Third Person Within One Essay

Some assignments legitimately combine both — a nursing case study might use third person to summarize clinical evidence and first person to reflect on your own decision-making. Massey University confirms this is acceptable practice: a mixture of first and third person for different purposes can work, depending on the assignment’s type, style guide, and discipline. The risk isn’t mixing point of view across sections — it’s mixing it unpredictably within a single paragraph, which reads as inconsistent rather than intentional. If you’re combining registers, signal the shift clearly, often with a subheading or a transitional sentence such as “having reviewed the literature, I now turn to my own clinical experience.”

Group Projects and the “We” Problem

Group assignments raise a specific version of this question: should you write “we” for a shared conclusion, or should each section stay in third person regardless of authorship? APA guidance is again useful here — UAGC notes that “we” should be reserved for situations where you have actual named coauthors. If you are writing an individually graded section of a shared project, avoid “we” for claims that are actually your own individual analysis — it can blur where credit and responsibility for the argument actually lie.

First Person for Concision, Not Just Reflection

There’s a subtler reason to use first person beyond genre convention: it can genuinely tighten your prose. Massey University notes that first person can actually make writing more concise when you’re offering personal reflection, stating a position, or outlining an assignment’s structure — for example, “I argue that…” is shorter and more direct than “This essay will argue that…” Where your assignment allows it, this can be a legitimate stylistic reason to choose “I,” not just a disciplinary requirement.

How to Decide: A Step-by-Step Process

Rather than memorizing exceptions, it’s faster to run through a short decision process before you start drafting. This works for essentially any essay assignment, in any discipline.

1. Check the assignment brief first. Look for explicit point-of-view instructions before writing a single sentence — many rubrics state this directly, and it overrides every general convention.
2. Identify what type of writing this actually is. Is it argumentative, reflective, a personal statement, or a formal research paper? The genre usually determines the default before you even think about style guides.
3. Apply the discipline default if nothing else is specified. Third person for argumentative, literary, and standalone research writing; first person for reflective, admissions, and personal-experience writing.
4. Check for format-specific exceptions. If you’re using APA, remember its preference for first person in methods and discussion sections describing your own research actions.
5. Decide if a mix is genuinely appropriate. If your assignment blends genres — clinical case study plus personal reflection — plan where the shift happens and signal it clearly.
6. Proofread specifically for point-of-view slips. Read your draft once purely to check pronoun consistency; this is a fast, high-value editing pass that’s easy to skip under deadline pressure. Building time management into your essay process makes room for this kind of dedicated proofreading pass.

A Worked Example: Rewriting the Same Sentence Three Ways

Same underlying idea, three legitimate versions — because three different assignment types were being served. Understanding exactly what your assignment is asking for is what makes this kind of choice fast instead of stressful.

Common Point-of-View Mistakes — And How to Fix Them

Avoiding “I” So Aggressively That Sentences Become Vague

Some students, trained to avoid first person at all costs, end up writing sentences like “it is believed that” or “it can be argued that” instead of simply stating their claim. This isn’t more objective — it’s vaguer, and it can read as evasive rather than authoritative. If your assignment allows first person, “I argue” is often clearer and stronger than “it is argued.”

Using “I” in a Formal Research Paper Without Checking the Style Guide First

The opposite mistake: assuming first person is always fine because “modern writing allows it,” without checking whether your specific assignment — a formal literature review, for instance — actually calls for third person. Writing Commons is explicit that this decision genuinely varies by professor and discipline, so don’t assume a rule that applies to your psychology methods class also applies to your English literature essay.

Referring to Yourself in the Third Person (“This Writer,” “The Author”)

Phrases like “this writer believes” or “the author contends” are an awkward hybrid that neither style guide actually recommends. As UAGC notes, current APA guidance specifically discourages this construction in favor of plain first person. If you’re tempted to write “this student’s analysis suggests,” just check whether first person (“my analysis suggests”) or plain third person (dropping the self-reference entirely) fits your assignment better.

Switching Point of View Mid-Paragraph Without a Reason

The most common mechanical error: starting a paragraph in third person and drifting into first person (or vice versa) without any structural signal. This usually happens during revision, when a sentence gets rewritten in isolation. A dedicated proofreading pass focused only on pronouns — separate from your grammar and content check — catches most of these. Common essay writing mistakes and how to fix them covers this alongside other structural revision habits worth building.

Confusing “Passive Voice” With “Objective Voice”

Passive third-person constructions (“mistakes were made,” “it was found that”) can feel more formal, but formality and objectivity aren’t the same thing. As Editage’s guidance notes, passive third person mainly obscures who performed an action rather than making the claim itself more credible. Where clarity matters more than formality, an active first-person or active third-person sentence (“I found,” or “the study found”) is often the better choice.

Frequently Asked Questions About Point of View in Essays