(July 21, 2016 at 3:16 pm)Rhythm Wrote: I doubt that it would, but in those cases that it does...as I already mentioned...it would show you that you were reading a fictional narrative -about- factual events. You'd have to check the contents though, and we're trying to avoid that.
Of course, we could needle in deeper, still without any knowledge of the content of the narrative, and examine narrative device.
Speaking in third person -omnipresent/omniscient- is definitively, and demonstrably a mark of fiction...regardless of whether or not you agree, or how many ways you'd like to pre-emptively split the baby. That's what makes it useful as a general principle.
As I said, I largely agree. But I could also see how a scientific report, may fit that criteria, with multiple people taking observations, and being in the third person. It may be a little different now with instruments to record, but you may have the same results in the literature. Most of the time, when I have read published papers, names aren't included. Similarly news reports, may just account for the facts, and give information from multiple points of view, without giving a first person account for each.
