Replacing the first person in formal writing

Now, while sometimes you can’t avoid using the first person in formal writing, usually you can. It’s usually fairly easy to replace what you would have said in the first person using the third person, like in this example:

In this essay, I have argued that gun control laws should be tightened.

Becomes:

In this essay, it has been argued that gun control laws should be tightened.

Another example:

This made me think about the consequences of gun control laws being abolished.

Becomes:

This prompted some consideration about the consequences of gun control laws being abolished.

One more example:

We then investigated the possibility that there was a government conspiracy behind the gun control laws.

Becomes:

Investigation was then carried out into the possibility of a government conspiracy being behind the gun control laws.

It’s quite common when you’re changing something from first person to third person to change the verb in the original sentence to a noun and to introduce another. Instead of ‘we then investigated’, we get ‘investigation was then carried out’. In the first case, ‘investigated’ is an active verb; in the second case ‘investigations’ is now a noun and there is new verb - ‘carried’.

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