Point of view

• Writers of analytical or research essays in the humanities usually use the third-person point of view: Austen presents…or Castel describes the battle as….
• Scientists and most social scientists, who depend on quantitative research to present findings, tend to use the third-person point of view: The results indicate….
• Writers in the humanities and in some social sciences occasionally use the first person in discussing their personal experience or in writing a personal narrative: After spending two years interviewing families affected by the war, I began to understand that….

• Literature scholars use the present tense to discuss a text: Hughes effectively dramatizes different views of minority assertiveness. (See 7e.)
• Science and social science writers use the past or present perfect tense to describe experiments from source materials and the present tense to discuss the writers' own findings: In 2003, Berkowitz released the first double-blind placebo study…. Rogers and Chang have found that…. Our results paint a murky picture. (See 60b.)
• Writers in history use the present tense or the present perfect tense to discuss a text: Shelby Foote describes the scene like this… or Shelby Foote has described the scene like this…. (See 63c.)