Here's a quick follow-up for the "other" Linda. Since we're no longer
discussing past perfect, I took the liberty of changing the subject line of
this thread.
I agree it's interesting. I'm always amazed by how many folks view passive
voice as an "error." I know of one former college professor who would give
students an "F" on a composition if they had even one passive verb. Yikes!
No wonder some folks have grown up with quite an emotional reaction to the
term as well as the numerous green underlines from their grammar checkers
indicating such "errors."
In my workshops, I teach the my participants to use passive in the following
situations:
1. Nobody knows who did the action of the verb
2. Nobody cares who did the action of the verb (as illustrated in previous
messages)
3. To be tactful or avoid placing blame on the reader
I appreciate the additional consideration of avoiding liability--although I
wonder how many recipients are starting to see through that strategy?
Linda
Linda Comerford
317.786.6404
[log in to unmask]
www.comerfordconsulting.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Linda Di Desidero
Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2008 11:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: past perfect--a final note
Interesting thread! A couple of quick comments in response to Craig and
Nancy re:
" ..the passive does tend to make writing impersonal. That is one reason,
though, that it shows up so much in scientific discourse. It doesn't matter
who heated the mixture for seven minutes at four hundred degrees, just that
it was done and can be replicated. (Notice the paasives at the end of the
last sentence.) Impersonal is not always good, not always bad, but something
we can benefit from noticing."
1. Passive does not always make writing impersonal. For example, if I write:
"I was delighted by your post," I think that I am writing something MORE
personal than "Your post delighted me." The difference, of course, is where
I want to place focus, on the effect or cause (or beginning or endpoint) of
the event: on my becoming delighted OR on your post causing me to become
delighted.
2. Scientific writing has become more and more 'impersonal' over the years.
Earlier examples of scientific discourse make frequent use of the first
person and are much more narrative in nature than the scientific language of
today.
3. In business writing, it is often very important to use passive and other
strategies in order to deny or obfuscate responsibility, lest the business
make itself liable.
4. When I deal with passive in the classroom, I find it more effective to
talk about it in terms of its semantics, particularly in terms of agency and
causality, rather than in terms of its syntactic structure (which is what
students have heard for years and which some of them have never quite
understood).
Good discussion--
"another" Linda
Linda Di Desidero, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Assistant Academic Director of Writing
University of Maryland University College
3501 University Boulevard, East
Adelphi, MD 20783
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Craig
Hancock
Sent: Sat 3/8/2008 9:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: past perfect--a final note
Nancy,
I like the last part of your post the best. You're right; the passive
does tend to make writing impersonal. That is one reason, though, that it
shows up so much in scientific discourse. It doesn't matter who heated the
mixture for seven minutes at four hundred degrees, just that it was done and
can be replicated. (Notice the paasives at the end of the last sentence.)
Impersonal is not always good, not always bad, but something we can benefit
from noticing.
I'm not as happy with the idea of "complete picture" because it assumes
that each and every sentence is a complete and separate statement, not tied
to discourse context or situation. If someone asks "how are you doing with
preparations for the party," you might very well say "the cake is baked, but
we need to pick up the drinks." The baker of the cake may be already known
or irrelevant.
There are functional approaches to language that are highly systematic.
I think we need a comprehensive understanding of language before we give out
prescriptive rules (the old "first, do no harm" maxim.) I have said on list
many times that I feel a disinterested, primarily descriptive linguistics
cannot solve the problem. Because people want advice on using language, they
turn to the handbooks. It's hard to blame people for doing that when they
don't have a practical alternative.
Linda points out that "it"and "there" are often extra words, but they are
also highly functional ways to extrapose a subject into focal prominence.
"It is easy to love you." "There's more than one way to skin a cat." Linda
wants to help, but she is figuring it out for herself on the basis of her
own thoughtful understanding. It's a daunting task.
It's not a matter of finding practical ways to use a formal
understanding, but of recognizing that function is already built in.
We need to look at how language works. Since effectiveness is context
specific, we need to look at ways in which language is sensitive to context.
And by "sensitive to context", I don't mean just dialect and social
register, but interaction and the construction of shared meaning.
Craig
> Like you, Linda, I work with a lot of people in the business community
> (as well as in the legal and judicial field). They want to know why
> their MSWord programs put green squiggly lines under every instance of
> the passive voice. They do not know (1) what the passive voice is or
> (2) why they are being advised to revise it.
>
> Here is what I tell them:
>
> First, I define the passive voice as a sentence in which the subject
> of an active verb is also the recipient of that action.
>
> Second, I tell them that it is perfectly fine to use the passive voice
> (which usually launches a rant about all the other ways that MS Word
> misleads writers about "problems" in their writing).
>
> Third, I tell them that in many cases it is better to write in the
> active voice because passive voice sentences frequently fail to give
> the reader a complete picture. If I read "The cake was baked," the
> picture in my mind is fuzzy because there is no agent for that action.
> Good writing seeks to elicit a picture in the reader's mind that
> matches the picture the writer is trying to convey, and passive voice
> sentences often relay fuzzier pictures than active voice
> sentences--not always, but often, and for the writer who is getting a
> green squiggly line under nearly every verb in a document, this point is
worth considering.
>
> Finally, I point out that many business writers use the passive voice
> to avoid using first-person pronouns--something they were taught to do
> back when the paradigm for businesseses was to maintain professional
> distance from the reader. They will write, for example, "Your request
> has been deinied" or "Your cooperation is appreciated" to avoid saying
> 'We have denied your request" or "We appreciate your cooperation." It
> strikes me that sentences such as these last two active voice
> sentences are more personal (while still being professional), while
> the first two passive voice constructions seem more institutional and
impersonal.
>
> Ed and Craig, do these points reflect a functional approach to
> language or a group (or personal!) prejudice?
>
> Nancy
>
>
>
> ---- Linda Comerford <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> In my business writing and grammar workshops, I strongly suggest
>> avoiding passive voice when a sentence contains all the components of
>> an active sentence. Those are normally the ones ending in a "by"
>> prepositional phrase. Since people in the business world are so darn
>> wordy (they tell me it's a habit from trying to fill those 500-word
>> theme requirements), I offer them the challenge of looking to save 50
>> cents a word for every unnecessary one they use.
>>
>> So they'd save a dollar by changing the following passive sentence to
>> an active one:
>>
>> Passive: The proposal was proofread by the partner.
>> Active; The partner proofread the proposal.
>>
>> To find such passives, I have them use the Control F ("F" stands for
>> "Find")
>> feature in Microsoft Word to find the word "by." They prefer that to
>> having their grammar checkers simply indicating "Passive" without
>> always offering the active version.
>>
>> By the way, the Control F technique works for finding any words
>> students use too repetitiously. Many struggle with using "that"
>> unnecessarily.
>> Also,
>> one of my pet peeves is expletives, so I have my participants search
>> for "It" and "There" to identify and then eliminate them.
>>
>> I hope these tips help all of you too.
>>
>> Linda
>>
>> Linda Comerford
>> Comerford Consulting
>> 317.786.6404
>> [log in to unmask]
>> www.comerfordconsulting.com <http://www.comerfordconsulting.com/>
>>
>>
>> _____
>>
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edgar Schuster
>> Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 2:05 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: past perfect--a final note
>>
>>
>> Craig may well be right about Orwell's sentiments; however, Orwell
>> himself near the end of his essay offers a set of six "rules" (the
>> word is his).
>> His fourth rule is "Never use the passive where you can use the active."
>> He
>> doesn't say "where you can use the active" but not the passive. But
>> he uses passives in four of the first 15 sentences of "Politics," and
>> it's not at all difficult to substitute actives for each them.
>> Hurrah for Craig's "we need a more functional orientation to language
>> so that choice can be built on something more than personal or group
>> prejudice."
>>
>> Ed Schuster
>>
>>
>> **************
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