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Reclaiming "I" How To Use First-Person Without Going Off The Rails

So we’ve talked a lot about why banning “I” in writing doesn’t really make sense. We’ve covered how professional writers use it, how the rule hurts student engagement, and what experts say about it. But now comes the part that’s actually useful if you’re a student: how to use “I” effectively in your own writing—without sounding too casual or off-topic. Let me start by saying this: using “I” doesn’t mean your whole essay has to be about your life story. It just means you’re allowed to show up in your writing. You can express what you think, explain why you think it, and help your reader understand your perspective. It’s about clarity and connection—not about turning an argument into a journal entry. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re writing an argument paper about climate change. You might be tempted to avoid first-person altogether. But there’s a big difference between saying, “The data clearly shows a rise in global temperatures,” and, “Based on the data I’ve analyzed, I argue th...
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What The Experts Say About Using "I" In Writing

By now, you’ve probably noticed that I’m pretty passionate about pushing back on the “never use ‘I’” rule in writing. But it’s not just a personal opinion—it’s something backed up by research, too. Experts who study writing and composition are saying loud and clear: using “I” can be a good thing, and avoiding it might be doing more harm than good. Take Julia Molinari, for example. She’s a researcher who’s spent a lot of time thinking about how academic writing works. In her dissertation, she points out that banning “I” doesn’t make writing more neutral—it just hides the person behind the words. She writes, “An absence of personal pronouns does not guarantee objectivity; it simply obscures the writer’s presence.” In other words, pretending the writer doesn’t exist doesn’t actually make the argument more fair or factual—it just makes it less transparent. That made a lot of sense to me. I’ve read papers where the author avoids saying “I think” or “I believe,” but you can still tell it’s...
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The Double Standard: Revised

If you’ve ever been told to leave out “I” in your school essays, you’re not alone. But have you noticed that a lot of professional writers use “I” all the time? It’s even common in published academic papers. So why are students told to avoid it like it’s a bad habit? In one of my classes last semester, I lost points for using “I argue” in my introduction. Then, in a reading for the same class, the author did exactly that—in the first paragraph! That’s when I started wondering who these rules are really for. Scholars, journalists, and essayists regularly use “I” to clarify their stance. In fact, many writing guides now encourage it when used appropriately. Julia Molinari, who writes about academic writing, points out that pretending the writer doesn’t exist is misleading. She says it hides the choices the author makes and gives a false sense of neutrality. Kimberly N. Parker also explains that students are often shocked when they’re told they can use “I.” That shock shows how deep t...
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How Writing Rules Kill Creativity: Revised

 Writing used to be something I looked forward to—until the rules took over. Don’t use contractions. Don’t use “I.” Don’t sound too casual. Suddenly, writing felt more like trying to pass a test than actually expressing something real. One of my friends once rewrote an entire essay just to remove every “I” she had written. She told me afterward that the paper didn’t feel like hers anymore. I knew exactly what she meant. Kimberly N. Parker writes about how students lose their connection to writing when they’re told to leave themselves out of it. In her classroom, students often say they used to enjoy writing—until they were told to stop using personal experience. Once they had to follow strict rules, writing started to feel robotic. Julia Molinari agrees. She says that academic rules often discourage creativity and make writing feel mechanical. Students aren’t encouraged to explore ideas or experiment with voice. Instead, they learn to follow a script. The thing is, writing is b...
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The Myth of Objectivity: Revised

 Have you ever been told not to use “I” in your writing because it’s “not academic”? A lot of students hear that advice and take it as fact. But here’s something worth thinking about—cutting out “I” doesn’t make writing more neutral. It just makes it less personal and often harder to follow. I remember once changing an entire paragraph just to avoid starting with “I think.” The version I ended up turning in sounded cleaner, maybe, but it didn’t sound like me. It felt like I had taken the heart out of what I wanted to say. The idea that using “I” makes your writing less credible is a myth. Every piece of writing has a writer behind it. Even if you don’t use first-person pronouns, your choices, arguments, and perspectives are still there. Hiding “I” doesn’t make a paper objective—it just makes it harder to connect with and often harder to understand. Kimberly N. Parker talks about this in her essay Never Use “I” , where she writes, “Writing can become a disembodied task… devoid of...
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How Writing Rules Kill Creativity (And What We Can Do About It)

We’ve all heard them—those rigid writing rules that seem to follow us from middle school through college. Don’t start a sentence with “but.” Don’t end one with a preposition. And of course, don’t use “I.” At some point, writing becomes less about saying something meaningful and more about avoiding red marks from a teacher. The problem is, when you strip away a student’s voice, you often strip away their interest too. I remember writing assignments where I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t figure out how to say it “the right way.” The result was a watered-down version of my original idea, edited to sound formal and distant—because that’s what I thought academic writing had to be. Honestly, it felt like I was writing as someone else. Not only did this make writing harder, it made me care a lot less about what I was writing. Kimberly N. Parker touches on this in Bad Ideas About Writing when she describes how her students felt disconnected from their work. She writes tha...
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The Double Standard—Why Do the Pros Get to Use “I” but We Don’t

If you’ve ever taken a writing class, chances are you’ve been told not to use “I” in your essays. The message is usually something like, “Keep it objective,” or “Academic writing should be impersonal.” But here’s what I find weird—if you open just about any book, journal article, or essay written by a professional, chances are they’re using “I” without a second thought. So why is it okay for them, but not for us? This double standard is something I started noticing in college. I’d write a paper and get feedback like, “Avoid personal language,” or “Too conversational.” Then I’d read an article by a well-respected scholar and see something like, “I argue that…” or “I want to suggest…” And I’d think, Wait—how come they get to do it? Let’s take a look at a few examples. In academic writing, especially in fields like sociology, philosophy, or education, it’s actually pretty common to see writers use “I.” It helps them clarify their argument and show ownership of their ideas. Even in scien...
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