Academic & Scientific Register

Academic French avoids 'je' in favor of passive/on/nous de modestie

French academic convention discourages the first-person je even more strongly than academic English discourages 'I' — many English style guides now tolerate 'I argue that...' in the humanities and social sciences, while French keeps leaning on impersonal on ('one observes'), passive constructions ('it has been demonstrated'), and the nous de modestie (a plural 'we' used by a single author to sound less self-centered). Directly translating 'I think that...' as je pense que often reads as underdeveloped or too casual for a French academic audience, more so than the equivalent would in English.