Chapter 8
Why the Active Voice Isn’t, and a Few Words About Being Concise
As I wrote earlier, most people know they should use the active voice, and they know the passive voice is bad, bad, bad. Yet they have no idea about the difference between the passive and active voice—and have trouble figuring it out when active-inclined people try to explain it to them.
One problem rests in the name. With “passive,” you probably expect sluggish, lie-around language. As for the active voice—zippy, good-time words. Even worse, what’s with that “voice”? Follow this reasoning and you’d think you should reserve the passive voice for melancholy movies about things such as people dying from tuberculosis, and the active voice for James Bond flicks.
Through all ...
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