Re: past perfect--a final note
Peter,
The passive examples we see as examples always look like misunderstood passives.  Your passive here--"was motivated"-- doesn't look like those  passives at all.

I think that teachers should ask, "Is this the most effective subject (or topic?)" --not "Why is this passive?"

Martha


I've always suspected that the anti-passive prejudice was motivated primarily by a desire to avoid seeming "passive."  Too bad we didn't call it something else . . .

Peter Adams


On Mar 7, 2008, at 2:05 PM, Edgar Schuster wrote:

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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