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How would one say "if you will" in third person POV?

I'm constantly finding myself wanting to type this phrase in papers but I usually refrain from it since "you" is second person and my teachers are exceptionally strict when it comes to POV in research papers.

Normally, I just replace "you" with "one" but that doesn't sound very... smooth, if you will.

RegDwigнt
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Brandon
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    This seems like a casual phrase that I wouldn't even use in a paper. – amanda witt Feb 07 '13 at 06:53
  • Two people telling me not to use this phrase is good enough for me. I had a feeling that was the answer. Thanks!

    P.S. Do you mind posting that as an answer @BillFranke so I can accept it?

     – Brandon Feb 07 '13 at 07:01
  • posted comment as answer. –  Feb 07 '13 at 07:37
  • Case closed, I see; but still I'm curious what you were trying to do. The phrase "If you will" is meant to address the reader of the paper - I mean, you are talking about use cases such as "we did a lot of research, or 'googling' if you will", right? So who are you addressing if you write it in the third person? – Mr Lister Feb 07 '13 at 08:07
  • About the closest I can think of is "one might say". It's not a real answer as it's just a phatic expression that happens to use the third person, and if anything is even worse in weakening the overall expression (of course you might say it, you just did). – Jon Hanna Feb 07 '13 at 09:08
  • The reason I wanted to use this phrase was because I used a term that isn't necessarily a technical term and I wanted to make that clear, but now that I think about it, i should just use technical term to be more accurate, anyways. – Brandon Feb 07 '13 at 14:26
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    @Brandon Maybe you can qualify that with "in layman's terms" or something. – Mr Lister Feb 07 '13 at 17:35

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Why do you want to use this pleonastic phrase? What does it add to the research paper beyond a verbal tic? Eliminate all unnecessary words! These words are absolutely unnecessary. I've been editing academic research papers every day for the past 16 years, and I've never yet seen one with this phrase. It's strictly a phatic remark reserved for spoken English and dialogue. See this and this.

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