jackbus01 wrote:
pandabear wrote:
But, getting back to the topic: When I was a government employee, they gave us some writing classes where the emphasis was on writing in a simple, understandable manner, and avoiding the passive voice.
When writing in passive voice, it is easy to obscure things. For example, you might write "Tommy was hit with a ball." The writer might or might know know who hit Tommy with a ball, and might or might not be trying to protect someone. People who read material that comes from the government don't want to be left guessing. It is a lot clearer if you switch to active voice. "Billy hit Tommy with a ball."
Yes, but sometimes the intent is to shift the blame for things. "Tommy was hit with a ball" and "Billy hit Tommy with a ball" have different meanings.
Billy might object to the second sentence whereas the first is more factual. Yes, active voice is clearer, but there is a lot more liability there.
As I had already mentioned, the passive voice need not to be nebulous. The same meaning in, "Billy hit Tommy with a ball", can be conveyed equivalently in the passive voice like so: "Tommy was hit with a ball by Billy." In fact, as I had said previously, the active voice equivalent of the unnecessarily nebulous passive voice statement, "Tommy was hit with a ball", is not, "Billy hit Tommy with a ball", but instead, "A ball hit Tommy".
17 Nov 2011, 2:29 pm
