2 ms·
> 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 t
by 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 agoThis "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 agoThe "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.