I'm not sure if it appears in other textbooks, but I don't think it's 
widespread, at least not in print. I have, though, had students who 
reported that their high-school English teachers told them something of 
the sort, and I had always assumed that this was the sort of 
misapprehension derived from in-class attempts to provide handy rules of 
thumb without considering the full consequences of those rules.

It may will be a muddled generalization based on observing awkward 
active-to-passive shifts such as the following:

"Woodward helped to expose the Watergate scandal, and since then many 
other important stories have been reported by him."

In such cases, of course, the passive, though, is only a symptom of the 
underlying flaw: the inappropriate shift of topic. It's the topic shift 
that forces the passive.

Karl

Spruiell, William C wrote:
>  Dear All: 
> 
> I teach a course for future English teachers on teaching grammar. As one
> of the course assignments, I have them pick a topic in grammar or
> punctuation relevant to their intended grade levels and do a
> comparison/contrast of how the topic is treated in K-12 textbooks for
> that grade level, and in reference grammars (I'm trying to get them to
> practice "comparison shopping" for textbooks, with the idea that they'll
> have input into the process in their school districts at some point).
> Reading their essays, of course, gives me an idea of what kinds of
> definitions and rules are popping up frequently in the textbooks they
> examine (my university has an educational materials library).  
> 
> One of the students this time around was looking at treatments of
> passive voice, and one of the texts admonished students never to mix
> active and passive in the same sentence - apparently, sentences like
> "Sven applied to college and was accepted" are verboten, and will cause
> the polar ice caps to melt, or lead to the birth of two-headed calves. I
> had never heard of that particular application of parallel structure
> before. I'm almost certain no editor applies such a rule - for one
> thing, it counteracts the kind of thoughtful management of sentence
> topic that the passive is good for  --  but I don't know if it's one of
> the old, bad rules (zombie), or that textbook author's recent invention
> (Frankenstein).  Has anyone run into this one before?
> 
> Thanks in advance --- Bill Spruiell
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 
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