Poorlaggedman
Private
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2019
I've encountered a couple odd occasions of the third person in essays and articles. There aren't a lot of them to convince me it was commonplace but two examples that bother me:
A Captain X's diary describes the actions of the regiments and then casually notes that "Capt X is in command of the regiment." So now I'm not entirely convinced the scanned diary excerpts I have scanned are even from Capt X's diary though they supposedly are.
Separately an essay written by a Sergeant Y decades later describes an action on the battlefield and then says "The writer at this time was on the left of the regiment looking backward to check for casualties." But there's no use of quotation or dialogue anywhere so presumably he's talking about himself and what he personally saw.
So would it be 19th century acceptable to write something and refer to yourself as "The writer"? Or would someone refer to themselves in the third person in a diary form? Both seem very odd to me to the point I'm questioning that the true authors are confused or garbled in either case.
Thanks
A Captain X's diary describes the actions of the regiments and then casually notes that "Capt X is in command of the regiment." So now I'm not entirely convinced the scanned diary excerpts I have scanned are even from Capt X's diary though they supposedly are.
Separately an essay written by a Sergeant Y decades later describes an action on the battlefield and then says "The writer at this time was on the left of the regiment looking backward to check for casualties." But there's no use of quotation or dialogue anywhere so presumably he's talking about himself and what he personally saw.
So would it be 19th century acceptable to write something and refer to yourself as "The writer"? Or would someone refer to themselves in the third person in a diary form? Both seem very odd to me to the point I'm questioning that the true authors are confused or garbled in either case.
Thanks