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I was given feedback by a reviewer that the article I had submitted shouldn't contain we-type sentences, as they made the article sound less scholarly (yes; I know; it’s a peculiarity of my field).

I want your advice on how to rewrite the following phrases to be more “scholarly” sounding:

  1. From Table 1 we can infer that …

  2. In Table 1 we can see that …

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    How about "Table 1 shows that" or "Table 1 suggests that" (depending on how strong the inference from Table 1 is)? Alternatively, replace "we" with "one" and you'll be in the area that some people call scholarly and others call pompous.
    – Andreas Blass
    Nov 24, 2016 at 20:14
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    @user1883050 you can rest assured that reviewers who give stupid feedback are decidedly not a peculiarity of your field.
    – Dan Romik
    Nov 24, 2016 at 22:17
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    @Sana What are you talking about? In French one can use "on" instead of "nous" usually. But "on" doesn't mean "one", it's an indeterminate number of unknown persons... And besides it's rather familiar if you use it to replace "nous", I don't think it would go well in an academic paper.
    – user9646
    Nov 25, 2016 at 8:19
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    @NajibIdrissi "One" in english does translate as "on" in french (except when it means "1" of course). In the spoken language, it is used as a familiar form of "we", but in written, it will usually be read as the impersonal pronoun.
    – T. Verron
    Nov 25, 2016 at 8:50
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    @T.Verron I know that, which is why I'm trying to make sense of Sana's comment. The only word that I can think of as being "interchangeable" with "nous" is "on", and as I wrote it's not translated as "one" in English, and it's rather familiar. (BTW, "1" is not translated to "on", it's "un" or "une".)
    – user9646
    Nov 25, 2016 at 8:56

2 Answers 2

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I had the same struggles. The general solution would be to start using the passive.

  1. It can be inferred ...
  2. It is Apparent from Fig/Table ...
  3. The results depicted in X would be always true ...

I actually dislike this style (since it is more boring; even though it is assumed the correct style to write academic reports, paper, thesis, dissertations etc. in Germany)

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    2 and 3 are not passive, in part because passive sentences require a verb. (One could argue that 1 isn't really passive either, but rather an active-voice sentence (describing the ability of "it" to do something) with a passive-voice dependent clause.)
    – JeffE
    Nov 25, 2016 at 13:13
  • I'm not sure you can just write the number 2. It should be "It is apparent from fig.". Also, although depicted sounds nice to me, I had our english correction change lots of these depict, demonstrate... Maybe it was his peculiarity. For me it sounds nice.
    – BioGeo
    Nov 25, 2016 at 13:46
  • Yes sorry, just jotted them down.
    – Michael Brenndoerfer
    Nov 25, 2016 at 13:50
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A few examples:

  1. "From Table 1, it can be inferred that"; "From Table 1, one can infer that"; "As can be inferred from Table 1".
  2. "In Table 1, rows X and Y show that"; "In Table 1, it can be observed that".

Do they better convey the meaning with respect to your choices? Not in the slightest. But maybe they will make the reviewer happier.

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    Also "From Table 1, it can be inferred that," and "Table 1 implies that."
    – aparente001
    Nov 25, 2016 at 0:17

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