4 ms·

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 thum

by 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".
  - Igelau 6y ago
    > Phrases in green are marked to show passive voice. That's still flagged as passive voice by this abomination of an editor. > Phrases in green use passive voice. The meaning of that is less clear than the original. The phrase isn't using anything. We are talking about how it was written: facts about its construction that happened to it. The only way we can do that honestly and concisely is with passive voice because the phrase is only passively involved. Rules like these are toxic nonsense.
  - porb121 6y ago
    You've perfectly demonstrated the problem with these kinds of revisions. "Phrases in green use passive voice" removes the passive voice, and in doing so, completely alters the semantic content of the sentence. The passive voice expressed a meaningfully different notion.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > In French, passive voice is used to redirect the spotlight on meaningful bits. True in English, too. It's a common bad-writing problem in English that it is frequently used improperly so that it obscures meaningful bits while being excessively verbose. Thus, common neophyte advice is “avoid passive voice”, and some people get super religious about this without understanding what problem the advice aina to solve.
abraae 6y ago
Sounds fascinating, I'd love to see some examples.
jcims 6y ago
I think we see passive voice a lot in technology because we're frequently describing actions and outcomes. The actors are either irrelevant or continuous and unambiguously implied. In the example we'd have to keep referring to 'Hemingway' or 'the application' in order to maintain active voice, which adds no value. E.g. 'Hemingway marks phrases green to show passive voice' Passive voice allows us to switch focus to the object that is being acted upon, which is much more relevant.
jasode 6y ago
>Passive voice isn't bad but it's primary purpose is to allow flexibility in word order. Maybe we're reading different things but from everything a I see, passive voice is way overused. Most writers are not deliberately sequencing their word order in the sentences which results in passive voice. Instead, most writers are omitting the active agent because it's the easier default. Unfortunately, this overuse of passive voice lacks punch. Example of a classic passive voice sentence: "Mistakes were made." Writers love hiding behind passive constructions like that. With no explicit agent, there's nobody in specific to point blame at nor offend. But the reader wants to know _who_ made the mistake. If possible, write the agent into the sentence: "Nixon made mistakes." or "Kissinger made mistakes." There was a writing style book that compared 10-K annual financial reports from companies that got hit by accounting scandals (Enron, Worldcom) vs clean companies (Berkshire Hathaway & Warren Buffet). There was a significantly more passive voice sentences in the dishonest companies. In contrast, Warren Buffet writes in a lively active-voice style ("I invested in this. We lost money on that.") I just checked the BH's most recent 2020 10-K and Warren Buffet still writes in active voice. (I wonder if there's a hedge fund that uses text analysis software to scan 10-K filings to quantify which company is overusing passive-voice as a parameter to their models.) For technical reports like "post-mortem of website outages"... the heavy use of passive voice is understandable since it's just trying to explain the problem and eventual solution and not focus on _who_ fat-fingered the command-line with incorrect config to cause the outage.
- Veen 6y ago
  > Mistakes were made You can be just as evasive in the active voice. Someone made a mistake. An error caused the deletion of your data. Most uses of the passive have nothing to do with being evasive.
  - jasode 6y ago
    >You can be just as evasive in the active voice. Someone made a mistake. Yes, but by explicitly adding the word "someone [...]", the hiding/concealment is calling attention to itself. It's an unusual and awkward construction of a sentence -- or -- the writer was trying to write a mystery/crime novel. On the other hand, if the writer doesn't want to name the agent without drawing attention to the writing style, the overuse of passive "to be" verbs instead of active verbs is the way to do it. Passive voice is the hallmark of government bureaucratic reports and they're boring and lack punch. >Most uses of the passive have nothing to do with being evasive. I agree.
Veen 6y ago
Yes, the passive voice is an information packaging construction. There are several others: existential clauses, it-cleft constructions, preposing and postposing, etc. It's just one of the many ways we can adjust the construction of English clauses to suit our purposes.

by jlos 6y ago

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".
- Igelau 6y ago
  > Phrases in green are marked to show passive voice. That's still flagged as passive voice by this abomination of an editor. > Phrases in green use passive voice. The meaning of that is less clear than the original. The phrase isn't using anything. We are talking about how it was written: facts about its construction that happened to it. The only way we can do that honestly and concisely is with passive voice because the phrase is only passively involved. Rules like these are toxic nonsense.
- porb121 6y ago
  You've perfectly demonstrated the problem with these kinds of revisions. "Phrases in green use passive voice" removes the passive voice, and in doing so, completely alters the semantic content of the sentence. The passive voice expressed a meaningfully different notion.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> In French, passive voice is used to redirect the spotlight on meaningful bits. True in English, too. It's a common bad-writing problem in English that it is frequently used improperly so that it obscures meaningful bits while being excessively verbose. Thus, common neophyte advice is “avoid passive voice”, and some people get super religious about this without understanding what problem the advice aina to solve.

abraae 6y ago

Sounds fascinating, I'd love to see some examples.

jcims 6y ago

I think we see passive voice a lot in technology because we're frequently describing actions and outcomes. The actors are either irrelevant or continuous and unambiguously implied. In the example we'd have to keep referring to 'Hemingway' or 'the application' in order to maintain active voice, which adds no value. E.g. 'Hemingway marks phrases green to show passive voice' Passive voice allows us to switch focus to the object that is being acted upon, which is much more relevant.

jasode 6y ago

>Passive voice isn't bad but it's primary purpose is to allow flexibility in word order. Maybe we're reading different things but from everything a I see, passive voice is way overused. Most writers are not deliberately sequencing their word order in the sentences which results in passive voice. Instead, most writers are omitting the active agent because it's the easier default. Unfortunately, this overuse of passive voice lacks punch. Example of a classic passive voice sentence: "Mistakes were made." Writers love hiding behind passive constructions like that. With no explicit agent, there's nobody in specific to point blame at nor offend. But the reader wants to know _who_ made the mistake. If possible, write the agent into the sentence: "Nixon made mistakes." or "Kissinger made mistakes." There was a writing style book that compared 10-K annual financial reports from companies that got hit by accounting scandals (Enron, Worldcom) vs clean companies (Berkshire Hathaway & Warren Buffet). There was a significantly more passive voice sentences in the dishonest companies. In contrast, Warren Buffet writes in a lively active-voice style ("I invested in this. We lost money on that.") I just checked the BH's most recent 2020 10-K and Warren Buffet still writes in active voice. (I wonder if there's a hedge fund that uses text analysis software to scan 10-K filings to quantify which company is overusing passive-voice as a parameter to their models.) For technical reports like "post-mortem of website outages"... the heavy use of passive voice is understandable since it's just trying to explain the problem and eventual solution and not focus on _who_ fat-fingered the command-line with incorrect config to cause the outage.

Veen 6y ago
> Mistakes were made You can be just as evasive in the active voice. Someone made a mistake. An error caused the deletion of your data. Most uses of the passive have nothing to do with being evasive.
- jasode 6y ago
  >You can be just as evasive in the active voice. Someone made a mistake. Yes, but by explicitly adding the word "someone [...]", the hiding/concealment is calling attention to itself. It's an unusual and awkward construction of a sentence -- or -- the writer was trying to write a mystery/crime novel. On the other hand, if the writer doesn't want to name the agent without drawing attention to the writing style, the overuse of passive "to be" verbs instead of active verbs is the way to do it. Passive voice is the hallmark of government bureaucratic reports and they're boring and lack punch. >Most uses of the passive have nothing to do with being evasive. I agree.

Veen 6y ago

Yes, the passive voice is an information packaging construction. There are several others: existential clauses, it-cleft constructions, preposing and postposing, etc. It's just one of the many ways we can adjust the construction of English clauses to suit our purposes.