3 ms·
I don't want to comment on the grammatical correctness, being a non-native English speaker, but on the subject of the passive in general I can safely say I sure
by frossie 18y ago
I don't want to comment on the grammatical correctness, being a non-native English speaker, but on the subject of the passive in general I can safely say I sure wouldn't mind some code to screen it out of our bug reporting system. Quite often the primary response is "The reason this is happening is because of X. X should be modified to trap this" or some such. Invariably, I have to enquire "so who will fix X and when are they likely to do it"? The passive construction has been used to mean "I will fix X now", "I would fix X but I am not going to", "I am addressing this to Joe, and I naturally assume that he will understand that he is supposed to fix X along the lines I described".
- 10ren 18y agoI'm seeing a connection between passive/active and declarative/imperative.
- gruseom 18y agoThe issue here is that people are evading responsibility, not that they are using the passive voice to do it (though the passive voice is notoriously handy for this purpose).
- frossie 18y agoNo, there is no conscious evasion of responsibility. The person who writes the response thinks they are saying "I will fix it" or "I am telling X to fix it" and the passive voice is consistent with what they think they are saying. It is just hard for anyone else to figure that out without being mindreaders. This is particularly common in people with academic background, as the passive voice is often encouraged in scientific writing.