Confusing yourself with your material – 151
but excludes others. It is most frequently used with verbs of
observation, perception and analysis (e.g. see, observe,
inspect, analyse, examine, find):
When we come to examine whether the Allies in World War II deliberately
ignored the plight of the Jews, we shall find the evidence is not
conclusive.
When we analyse the second stanza of the poem, we discover that the
rhyme scheme has become even more complex.
We have seen in Heart of Darkness how Marlow’s narrative distorts the
sequence of the events as they must actually have happened to him. Now
we must ask what structural implications Conrad’s experimenting with
time has for this novel.
3 When an essay or article is written collaboratively by more
than one author, in which case ‘we’ will be employed for
those uses of ‘I’ set out above. Since most of your essays or
papers will be written alone, you shouldn’t often have need
for this use of ‘we’.
Acquiring confidence in your use of ‘I’ and ‘we’ should help you to
define more clearly for yourself your relationship with the material,
with other scholars’ judgements on it and with your reader. It should,
in addition, help you to avoid some of the pitfalls in structuring
sentences and clarifying meanings that await those who try to write
in a spuriously objective style. To these pitfalls we now turn.
2
Confusing yourself with your material
2.1
Dangling modifiers
It might seem quite improbable that you would confuse yourself with
what you are writing about. But people often structure their sentences
but excludes others. It is most frequently used with verbs of
observation, perception and analysis (e.g. see, observe,
inspect, analyse, examine, find):
When we come to examine whether the Allies in World War II deliberately
ignored the plight of the Jews, we shall find the evidence is not
conclusive.
When we analyse the second stanza of the poem, we discover that the
rhyme scheme has become even more complex.
We have seen in Heart of Darkness how Marlow’s narrative distorts the
sequence of the events as they must actually have happened to him. Now
we must ask what structural implications Conrad’s experimenting with
time has for this novel.
3 When an essay or article is written collaboratively by more
than one author, in which case ‘we’ will be employed for
those uses of ‘I’ set out above. Since most of your essays or
papers will be written alone, you shouldn’t often have need
for this use of ‘we’.
Acquiring confidence in your use of ‘I’ and ‘we’ should help you to
define more clearly for yourself your relationship with the material,
with other scholars’ judgements on it and with your reader. It should,
in addition, help you to avoid some of the pitfalls in structuring
sentences and clarifying meanings that await those who try to write
in a spuriously objective style. To these pitfalls we now turn.
2
Confusing yourself with your material
2.1
Dangling modifiers
It might seem quite improbable that you would confuse yourself with
what you are writing about. But people often structure their sentences