Scientific writing - we vs. I

[Sabine Dippel]

Since scientific writing was an issue here some time ago, and most people
in this group are native speakers of English, I hope I can get some opinions
on the following question. 

I am about to start writing up parts of my PhD thesis, which will be in English.
While I usually use "we" in papers, since I have never written a single author
paper, it sounds a bit strange to me to use it in the thesis as well. I know 
that many people do so, but to me it has a taste of "pluralis majestatis"
(whatever that is in English). In my masters thesis, I circumvented the problem 
by using the passive voice, which in German is okay, but in English sounds 
awful, at least to me. 

What are your feelings about using "we" or "I"? 

Sabine

+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Sabine Dippel     | e-mail: s.dippel at fz-juelich.de                  | 
| HLRZ              | phone : [++49] (2461) 61-2318                   | 
| FZ Juelich        | fax   : [++49] (2461) 61-2430                   | 
| 52425 Juelich     | WWW   : http://www.hlrz.kfa-juelich.de/~sabine/ | 
| Germany           |                                                 | 
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+