A great discussion going.  It's good to hear from new members about what is
going on out there in the schools.

The distinction between grammar and style gets lost frequently when
people--teachers, language authorities--search for judgments to make about
how to tell good writing from bad.  The rigid rules about the passive that
Bill and others have cited are a good example of a stylistic issue hardening
into a grammatical one.  This has happened before.  The former "rules" about
not splitting an infinitive and not ending a sentence with a preposition
arose from the mix of some 18/19th century notions of constructions that
seemed weak or awkward combined with some mistaken notions about parts of
speech (pre-positions should not appear in the post-position, for example).
The stylistic guidelines hardened into two "grammar" rules until they
loosened over the last few decades.

I think one reason why the passive, like the split infinitve and the final
preposition, harden into grammar rules is that such constructions are easy
to spot; they are all essentially matters of word order.  One need know
little else about grammar or effective writing to scan a sentence and, if
one is feeling insecure about how to assess one's own or somone else's
writing--and that is very often the case--one can pick on the word order.

Brock Haussamen


Brock Haussamen
English Department
Raritan Valley Community College
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phone: 908-526-1200, ext. 8307