Third person constructions. Some disciplines and their journals (e.g., organismal biology and ecology) have moved away from a very strict adherence to the third person construction, and permit limited use of the first person in published papers. 1. Select a Topic If your lecturer does not assign a topic or a particular article for you to review, and you must choose a topic yourself, try using a review article from your eld. Every sentence must have a subject and a verb. Avoid using the first person, I or we, in writing. Keep your writing impersonal, in the third person. Instead of saying, "We weighed the frogs and put them in a glass jar write, "The frogs were weighed and put in a. How do you then put all this information together? If your instructor has not provided a format for your critique, there are two possible ways you might present it. Approach (A) If your instructor is concerned that that the article be clearly situated within the social and intellectual research context. Use first person in the methods sparingly if at all, and avoid its use in the results. Use Active Verbs : Use active verbs whenever possible; writing that overly uses passive verbs (is, was, has, have, had) is deadly to read and almost always results in more words than necessary.