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Fear and Loathing of the English Passive (2010)
- nephihaha 11mo agoOrwell is partly to blame because he wrote against it. I suspect it is partly because passives are more cumbersome in English. Many English writing guides seem to display a fear of adverbs as well.
- zimpenfish 11mo agoLanguage Log[0] (where Mr Pullum often writes[2]) has a whole bunch of "prescriptive passive is nonsense" posts[1]. [0] https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/ https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/ [1] https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=passive+voice https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=passive+vo... (this does include praise for correct use of passive voice, etc., but there's a good amount of criticism.) [2] https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?author=3 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?author=3 (except this search appears broken, at least on Safari)