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