Editing Encyclopedia:Manual of Style (section)

====First-person pronouns<span class="anchor" id="First-person pronouns"></span>====
{{Shortcut|MOS:I|MOS:OUR|MOS:PERSON|MOS:WE}}

To maintain an objective and impersonal encyclopedic voice, an article should never refer to its editors or readers using ''I'', ''my'', ''we'', ''us'', ''our'', or similar words: {{!xt|We note that some believe that bats are bugs}}. But some of these words are acceptable in certain figurative uses. For example:
*In historical articles to mean the modern world as a whole: {{xt|Only portions of ''De re publica'' have come down to us.}}
*The [[author's we|author's ''we'']] found in scientific writing ({{xt|We construct {{mvar|S}} as follows}}), though [[English passive voice|passive voice]] may be preferable ({{xt|{{mvar|S}} is constructed as follows}}).{{efn|name=passive|1={{anchor|passive|Passive|PASSIVE}}The [[English passive voice|passive voice]] is inappropriate for some forms of writing, but it is widely used in encyclopedia articles, because the passive voice avoids inappropriate first- and second-person constructions as well as tone problems. The most common uses of encyclopedic passive are to keep the focus on the subject instead of performing a [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a newspaper|news-style]] shift to dwelling on a non-notable party. Contrast {{xt|The break-in was reported to police the next morning}}, versus {{!xt|Assistant manager Peggy Plimpton-Chan reported the break-in to police the next morning}}.}}