7 ms·

This reminds of the technical writing education I received in college. While I understand the goal of this guidance is to make technical communication as clear

by scudd 6y ago

This reminds of the technical writing education I received in college. While I understand the goal of this guidance is to make technical communication as clear and concise as possible, I also feel like it leads to a world of boring writers. And (IMO) boring communication actually should be recognized as worse communication, in comparison to communication that combines technical detail with human deliverance. The problem is all the more exacerbated when the guidance uses a checklist-like rubric such as: -"this sentence exceeds X word count, consider splitting" -"this sentence uses passive voice, use active voice". I remember "revising" parts of my senior design to score higher against a similar rubric, despite being confident that the revision was overall worse. Writing quality is inherently subjective, maybe to the chagrin of engineering types. Even though there are horrendous emails and documentation in the wild, I still think teaching people how to write with tools like this isn't the solution.

sokoloff 6y ago
What is a better solution? For business writing, just consistently considering the active voice would improve many writers’ output. “It was decided that we’d lower shipping prices.” versus “Chris decided to lower our shipping prices.” I don’t know if writers choose the former because it feels fancier, because they notice other writers doing it (maybe because they struggled to read what was written and took notice of the pattern?), or because they don’t know or don’t want to commit to what actually happened, but it’s incredibly frustrating to read a sea of passively voiced sentences about what happened.
- stiglitz 6y ago
  Passive voice can be used to omit the doer of the action, which is preferable when the action itself is the focus. The choice between active and passive voice should be based on this choice of focus. You can’t say categorically that the active voice is better than passive, classical rule of thumb notwithstanding.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    >Passive voice can be used to omit the doer of the action, which is preferable when the action itself is the focus. Behold, the most important thing to know about business writing: >Chris broke the build. >The build was broken.
    - Garlef 6y ago
      "The team decided to let chris break the build." ;)
    - groby_b 6y ago
      Still to finger-pointy. Try "a build breakage occurred".
      - whatshisface 6y ago
        "The set of broken expanded to include the build."
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      Jesus. We Chrises can never get a break... unless its the build. -_-
  - Uehreka 6y ago
    Yeah, but to people who see what you’re doing, it’s clear that you’re dodging responsibility. Like, focusing on the action is preferable because it takes emphasis off the doer. I prefer that folks just say “we did the thing” instead of saying “the thing was done”. We know who did it, trying to shade that fact away with grammar just looks suspicious.
    - throwaway1777 6y ago
      Go for it. Meanwhile those of who like having clients will avoid directly blaming them.
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  > but it’s incredibly frustrating to read a sea of passively voiced sentences about what happened. Tolstoy's War and Peace would frustrate you to insanity in that case.
  - zorked 6y ago
    This "rule" against passive voice doesn't exist in every language. What looks like good writing in English may look like childish, repetitive prose in other languages.
    - wolki 6y ago
      The "rule" doesn't exist in English either. Most of the people complaining about the passive have either serious trouble identifying a passive at all, or can't construct an argument why it's bad to save their lives, as amply demonstrated by Geoffrey Pullum. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf Section 2 is a bit technical, but the rest is a great read.
- wenc 6y ago
  In your example, the primary difference for me wasn't so much active-vs-passive, but attribution. I've seen the passive voice used to great effect for softening statements and avoiding the assignment of blame/other undesirable attribute. Instead of "Chris and Jack disagreed during the discussion", one could say "No agreement was reached during the discussion". One may say this is mealy-mouthed, but it seems to me that managing emotions is a supremely important part of being a good communicator and being a consensus-builder. Avoiding the use of language that triggers "fight-or-flight" responses is very useful in many situations.
- scudd 6y ago
  For the simplest of communications, like an IM or short email, maybe using checklist rules does impart more good than bad. But I think in larger writing pieces, including those technical in nature, these rules produce low quality writing. In my experience it produces extremely curt, choppy writing with overall bad flow. It almost feels like a bulleted list converted to a paragraph, with a sprinklings of "and"s, "so"s and "because"s. And while "flow" sounds like a wishy-washy concept, I think it is effectual and worthy of first level consideration. It shapes how well your ideas synthesize together, and ultimately how well you communicate your thoughts, ideas, and feelings.
- crooked-v 6y ago
  The former allows hiding or diverting blame for an action, which is part of why it's so popular with corporations and law enforcement.
jlos 6y ago
The passive voice one is a common misunderstanding. Passive voice isn't bad but it's primary purpose is to allow flexibility in word order. A good rule of thumb is to have something familiar at the beginning of a sentence and something new at the end of a sentence. Further, to create flow what was the new part in the previous sentence should become the familiar part in the current sentence. Subject verb object pattern in the active voice often requires the object performing the action of the verb to be at the beginning of the sentence . This is often not desirable if that object is indeed the new thing you want to introduce at the end of a sentence.
- poutrathor 6y ago
  In French, passive voice is used to redirect the spotlight on meaningful bits. In their example & imho, "Phrases in green have been marked to show passive voice." communicates their intent better than "We marked in green phrase using passive voice". The 'we' is useless.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    I think both are worse than: "To show passive voice, phrases are marked in green."
    - rrose 6y ago
      that is definitely worse than either of the other examples. your version doesn't specify which phrases are marked in green.
      - systemvoltage 6y ago
        You're right. I see the problem :) It is subtle, but nice catch.
  - treis 6y ago
    You can replace "have been" with are in these sorts of cases. So "Phrases in green are marked to show passive voice." Or even shorter "Phrases in green use passive voice".
munro 6y ago
> This reminds of the technical writing education I received in college. While I understand the goal of this guidance is to make technical communication as clear and concise as possible, I also feel like it leads to a world of boring writers. And (IMO) boring communication actually should be recognized as worse communication, in comparison to communication that combines technical detail with human deliverance. The site says this sentence is very hard to read, and I will get lost trying to follow your meandering. :) I totally agree, I disabled all predictive text. The feature in Gmail is the worst. It's like, no thanks Google, I don't need you to tell me what I'm going to say, or how to say it.
tomc1985 6y ago
To be fair, active voice makes a huge difference over passive voice. It's good to avoid passive voice in all of one's writing. And the LAST thing I want to see is people reverting back to the obnoxiously wordy and flowery styles of writing that were common a hundred years ago+
jl6 6y ago
A common pitfall when trying to humanise technical content (particularly error messages) is to add folksy cutesy whimsical flourishes which are cute and funny and whatever to some of your audience, but might be a barrier to others (particular those who do not share your cultural background or have English as a second language).
- sidpatil 6y ago
  I think it's part of a larger trend of infantilization of the end user, which I find disturbing.
ksdale 6y ago
When I was a child learning to write, so many of these rules bothered me so much. I'd get notes like that on my papers, and I'd think, "Yeah, but my way sounds better..." But so often that point is met with a blank stare, as if how the writing comes out doesn't matter at all compared to whether the "rules" were followed. I'm sure a lot of it was me just being a headstrong young person, but I also know that according to grades, I was much better at writing than most of my peers, and I also continually felt like I was writing worse than I could have been, in order to satisfy teachers.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  The goal of all writing classes is to make the grader happy. For a good writing class, making the grader happy and writing well are in close alignment. For the overwhelming majority of writing classes the two are mostly orthogonal. The above paragraph is obvious to many, but wasn't to me as I'm not great at picking up on social cues. What finally made it click was comparing grades with a friend for an assignment that had a rubric. Each category could get a "+" a "" or a "-" (in descending order of "goodness"). My friends marks were strictly worse than mine, he got a B, I got a D. Usually it's less blatant than this, but this particular teacher had it in for me (though not without cause).
turnerdhooch 6y ago
Depends on if you prefer a longer time to launch using training wheels or a shorter time to launch by crashing and burning repeatedly. Given the low resilience of most people, training wheels is going to win out, and the beauty of it is that they are removable.
jkingsbery 6y ago
90% of the time when I give feedback reviewing other people's work that they use passive, it's not using about active for the sake of active. It's that in choosing to use the passive, the writer leaves ambiguous who is performing an action.

by scudd 6y ago

sokoloff 6y ago

What is a better solution? For business writing, just consistently considering the active voice would improve many writers’ output. “It was decided that we’d lower shipping prices.” versus “Chris decided to lower our shipping prices.” I don’t know if writers choose the former because it feels fancier, because they notice other writers doing it (maybe because they struggled to read what was written and took notice of the pattern?), or because they don’t know or don’t want to commit to what actually happened, but it’s incredibly frustrating to read a sea of passively voiced sentences about what happened.

stiglitz 6y ago
Passive voice can be used to omit the doer of the action, which is preferable when the action itself is the focus. The choice between active and passive voice should be based on this choice of focus. You can’t say categorically that the active voice is better than passive, classical rule of thumb notwithstanding.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  >Passive voice can be used to omit the doer of the action, which is preferable when the action itself is the focus. Behold, the most important thing to know about business writing: >Chris broke the build. >The build was broken.
  - Garlef 6y ago
    "The team decided to let chris break the build." ;)
  - groby_b 6y ago
    Still to finger-pointy. Try "a build breakage occurred".
    - whatshisface 6y ago
      "The set of broken expanded to include the build."
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    Jesus. We Chrises can never get a break... unless its the build. -_-
- Uehreka 6y ago
  Yeah, but to people who see what you’re doing, it’s clear that you’re dodging responsibility. Like, focusing on the action is preferable because it takes emphasis off the doer. I prefer that folks just say “we did the thing” instead of saying “the thing was done”. We know who did it, trying to shade that fact away with grammar just looks suspicious.
  - throwaway1777 6y ago
    Go for it. Meanwhile those of who like having clients will avoid directly blaming them.
vagrantJin 6y ago
> but it’s incredibly frustrating to read a sea of passively voiced sentences about what happened. Tolstoy's War and Peace would frustrate you to insanity in that case.
- zorked 6y ago
  This "rule" against passive voice doesn't exist in every language. What looks like good writing in English may look like childish, repetitive prose in other languages.
  - wolki 6y ago
    The "rule" doesn't exist in English either. Most of the people complaining about the passive have either serious trouble identifying a passive at all, or can't construct an argument why it's bad to save their lives, as amply demonstrated by Geoffrey Pullum. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf Section 2 is a bit technical, but the rest is a great read.
wenc 6y ago
In your example, the primary difference for me wasn't so much active-vs-passive, but attribution. I've seen the passive voice used to great effect for softening statements and avoiding the assignment of blame/other undesirable attribute. Instead of "Chris and Jack disagreed during the discussion", one could say "No agreement was reached during the discussion". One may say this is mealy-mouthed, but it seems to me that managing emotions is a supremely important part of being a good communicator and being a consensus-builder. Avoiding the use of language that triggers "fight-or-flight" responses is very useful in many situations.
scudd 6y ago
For the simplest of communications, like an IM or short email, maybe using checklist rules does impart more good than bad. But I think in larger writing pieces, including those technical in nature, these rules produce low quality writing. In my experience it produces extremely curt, choppy writing with overall bad flow. It almost feels like a bulleted list converted to a paragraph, with a sprinklings of "and"s, "so"s and "because"s. And while "flow" sounds like a wishy-washy concept, I think it is effectual and worthy of first level consideration. It shapes how well your ideas synthesize together, and ultimately how well you communicate your thoughts, ideas, and feelings.
crooked-v 6y ago
The former allows hiding or diverting blame for an action, which is part of why it's so popular with corporations and law enforcement.

jlos 6y ago

The passive voice one is a common misunderstanding. Passive voice isn't bad but it's primary purpose is to allow flexibility in word order. A good rule of thumb is to have something familiar at the beginning of a sentence and something new at the end of a sentence. Further, to create flow what was the new part in the previous sentence should become the familiar part in the current sentence. Subject verb object pattern in the active voice often requires the object performing the action of the verb to be at the beginning of the sentence . This is often not desirable if that object is indeed the new thing you want to introduce at the end of a sentence.

poutrathor 6y ago
In French, passive voice is used to redirect the spotlight on meaningful bits. In their example & imho, "Phrases in green have been marked to show passive voice." communicates their intent better than "We marked in green phrase using passive voice". The 'we' is useless.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I think both are worse than: "To show passive voice, phrases are marked in green."
  - rrose 6y ago
    that is definitely worse than either of the other examples. your version doesn't specify which phrases are marked in green.
    - systemvoltage 6y ago
      You're right. I see the problem :) It is subtle, but nice catch.
- treis 6y ago
  You can replace "have been" with are in these sorts of cases. So "Phrases in green are marked to show passive voice." Or even shorter "Phrases in green use passive voice".

munro 6y ago

> This reminds of the technical writing education I received in college. While I understand the goal of this guidance is to make technical communication as clear and concise as possible, I also feel like it leads to a world of boring writers. And (IMO) boring communication actually should be recognized as worse communication, in comparison to communication that combines technical detail with human deliverance. The site says this sentence is very hard to read, and I will get lost trying to follow your meandering. :) I totally agree, I disabled all predictive text. The feature in Gmail is the worst. It's like, no thanks Google, I don't need you to tell me what I'm going to say, or how to say it.

tomc1985 6y ago

To be fair, active voice makes a huge difference over passive voice. It's good to avoid passive voice in all of one's writing. And the LAST thing I want to see is people reverting back to the obnoxiously wordy and flowery styles of writing that were common a hundred years ago+

jl6 6y ago

A common pitfall when trying to humanise technical content (particularly error messages) is to add folksy cutesy whimsical flourishes which are cute and funny and whatever to some of your audience, but might be a barrier to others (particular those who do not share your cultural background or have English as a second language).

sidpatil 6y ago
I think it's part of a larger trend of infantilization of the end user, which I find disturbing.

ksdale 6y ago

When I was a child learning to write, so many of these rules bothered me so much. I'd get notes like that on my papers, and I'd think, "Yeah, but my way sounds better..." But so often that point is met with a blank stare, as if how the writing comes out doesn't matter at all compared to whether the "rules" were followed. I'm sure a lot of it was me just being a headstrong young person, but I also know that according to grades, I was much better at writing than most of my peers, and I also continually felt like I was writing worse than I could have been, in order to satisfy teachers.

aidenn0 6y ago
The goal of all writing classes is to make the grader happy. For a good writing class, making the grader happy and writing well are in close alignment. For the overwhelming majority of writing classes the two are mostly orthogonal. The above paragraph is obvious to many, but wasn't to me as I'm not great at picking up on social cues. What finally made it click was comparing grades with a friend for an assignment that had a rubric. Each category could get a "+" a "" or a "-" (in descending order of "goodness"). My friends marks were strictly worse than mine, he got a B, I got a D. Usually it's less blatant than this, but this particular teacher had it in for me (though not without cause).

turnerdhooch 6y ago

Depends on if you prefer a longer time to launch using training wheels or a shorter time to launch by crashing and burning repeatedly. Given the low resilience of most people, training wheels is going to win out, and the beauty of it is that they are removable.

jkingsbery 6y ago

90% of the time when I give feedback reviewing other people's work that they use passive, it's not using about active for the sake of active. It's that in choosing to use the passive, the writer leaves ambiguous who is performing an action.