Craig,

Regarding one of my pet peeves, "it" and "there" expletives, I'm wondering
if you would accept "Loving you is easy" as a more streamlined way of
saying, "It is easy to love you"?  I'm fine with your cat-skinning "there"
expletive.

As I believe you can see from my posts, I try to give those in my one-day
classes information to help them make informed decisions about their writing
afterwards.  If I received 50 cents every time I see folks write sentences
like, "There are many reasons why the cafeteria should remain open beyond
2:00," in my 20+ year career, I'd be rich!  To me, such sentences are the
equivalent of starting a sentence in a presentation with "uh" or "um."  My
theory about expletives is that they start so many sentences because their
writers often don't know where they want their sentences to go.  Writing is
discovery, so those lead-in words give them time to get to their point.  But
if they keep the expletive, they often delay the subject until the middle of
the sentence where their readers are more likely to miss it.  Instead, I
offer them the option to start with the subject as in this re-write:  "The
cafeteria should remain open beyond 2:00 for many reasons."  Writers and
readers alike appreciate such streamlined clarity.

That's when my "save 50 cents a word" editorial tip comes into play.  My
participants not only resonate to it but remember it.  I've encountered
folks from one of my classes over 10 years ago tell me they draft without
regard to wordiness but then revise with that 50-cent idea in mind.  Maybe
with inflation I should up it to $1.00....

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 Craig Hancock
Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 9:43 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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