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Author Topic: A short history of the passive voice
swallow
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posted 30 July 2004 02:46 PM      Profile for swallow     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
From the latest issue of Maisonneuve, by Nicolas Hune-Brown:

quote:

2004 ... "It's also important for the people of Iraq to know that in a democracy, everything is not perfect, that mistakes were made."
-- President George W. Bush on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal

1986 ... "Mistakes were made."
-- Former President Ronald Reagan on the Iran-contra affair

1940 ... "Vodka was enjoyed, bloody purges were committed."
-- Stalin on human atrocity and casual drinking

1536 ... "The Incas have to realize that not all conquistadors are perfect. Natives were massacred. Staggeringly large shipments of gold were expropriated."
-- Francisco Pizarro, winning Incan hearts and minds at Caxamalca


And so on. Unfortunately, the article was not posted on-line.

Got more? Is the passive voice evil?


From: fast-tracked for excommunication | Registered: May 2002  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 30 July 2004 02:49 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think this topic merits more serious thought than "banter" so I'm moving it to the "ideas, etc..." forum.

That's really neat, btw, swallow.


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Cougyr
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posted 30 July 2004 03:26 PM      Profile for Cougyr     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
So, what's this " passive voice " ? I certainly think that George W. Bush personifies evil incarnate.
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Rufus Polson
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posted 30 July 2004 03:41 PM      Profile for Rufus Polson     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The passive voice is where something gets done but the sentence has no identifiable actor. Grammatically, there's no "subject", only a verb and an object.
So, active voice goes "I made mistakes", or "The ratfink I appointed made mistakes", where "made" is the verb, "mistakes" is the object, and "I" or "The ratfink" is the subject.
Passive voice goes "Mistakes were made", where "were made" is the verb, "Mistakes" is the object, and apparently nobody in particular actually did it--the mistakes just sort of happened. Nobody to blame.
Passive voice can be useful to describe situations where shit just is happening and there isn't a particular obvious cause. But it's used a lot for weaseling and ducking responsibility, and apparently has been for a long long time. Conquistadors? I never would have figured them for responsibility-ducking wussies; I always figured they were more Viking-style, where the fact that they massacred a bunch of natives was just part of the deal, and who cared? But I guess they were a lot like Bush--vicious but sanctimonious, religion excuses everything but let's not get too specific about what it needs to excuse.

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Cougyr
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posted 30 July 2004 03:45 PM      Profile for Cougyr     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oh, thanks. And, yes, there certainly is a lot of weaseling these days.
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'lance
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posted 30 July 2004 03:56 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Conquistadors? I never would have figured them for responsibility-ducking wussies; I always figured they were more Viking-style, where the fact that they massacred a bunch of natives was just part of the deal, and who cared? But I guess they were a lot like Bush--vicious but sanctimonious, religion excuses everything but let's not get too specific about what it needs to excuse.

A quibble: my Spanish is rudimentary at best, but I wonder if that Pizarro quotation was accurately translated. I'd like to see the original.

This page says that in Spanish, actions are described in the passive voice using the verb ser (one form of the verb "to be"), plus a transitive verb -- i.e., a verb which takes an object. So the proper form of a sentence like "Natives were massacred" would be "Natives were massacred by (whoever-it-was)."


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swallow
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posted 30 July 2004 04:11 PM      Profile for swallow     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hm. I'm fairly sure it was a joke, not an actual quote. The last entry is:

quote:
Paleolithic era ... "Blunt sticks gathered, skulls bashed. Ugh."
-- Stig, defending his use of the newly acquired 'opposable thumbs of mass destruction'

However, grammar rules are made to be broken, no? "Mistakes were made by me/my lackey/that monkey over there" is supposed to be the form in English too, isn't it?

I like the Todd Bertuzzi "apology" for this form of weaselling: "I regret what happened out there." As if he wasn't involved at all.


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'lance
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posted 30 July 2004 04:16 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
I'm fairly sure it was a joke, not an actual quote.

D'oh!

quote:
However, grammar rules are made to be broken, no? "Mistakes were made by me/my lackey/that monkey over there" is supposed to be the form in English too, isn't it?

I'm not sure. "Mistakes were made," however weaselly, makes grammatical sense in English. As I understand it, the Spanish version simply wouldn't make sense. I could be wrong, of course.

quote:
I like the Todd Bertuzzi "apology" for this form of weaselling: "I regret what happened out there." As if he wasn't involved at all.

Yeah, that's my favourite.

I'm no great fan of Wayne Gretzky, but I was glad when he announced that Bertuzzi wouldn't be on the World Cup team. Of course, the reason he gave was that Bertuzzi would still be under suspension, not that he acted like a sociopathic thug.


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skdadl
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posted 30 July 2004 04:34 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
When I was teaching, I used to call the passive voice the bureaucratic voice, and made up all kinds of funny civil-service evasions for my kids, hoping that that in itself would wean them from using it much. For some reason, nervous writers turn to the passive a lot, and it is so wordy, so clunky, even when one is not trying to be evasive or crooked. I mean, often my students would get the active agent in there, in a prepositional phrase following ("That was done by me"), and it was such a struggle to convince them to be brave enough just to write: "I did it!"

Once when I was handing back papers, I made a sort of general comment about hoping people would watch the passives, and one resentful young woman piped up from the back of the room, "So is the passive voice ungrammatical? Is it WRONG?"

So I was forced to concede no, it isn't WRONG; it is a legitimate construction and it has its uses ... And before I could finish, she sat back smugly and sneered at me, "So it's just your opinion."

Sigh.


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skdadl
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posted 30 July 2004 04:38 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Paleolithic era ... "Blunt sticks gathered, skulls bashed. Ugh."

This could be fun.

Jacobin history: "Versailles was ransacked. Cake was eaten. Heads were removed. Knitting was engaged in."


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lagatta
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posted 30 July 2004 04:42 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It is useful to avoid tautology, as in: My bicycle was stolen, rather than (duh): A thief stole my bicycle. Another legitimate use is to emphasise the object, rather than the subject. Or a service (without the verb to be) English spoken/On parle français, bicyles repaired.

Of course, it is overused.


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'lance
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posted 30 July 2004 04:44 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
In my line of work, I'm constantly issuing reports containing sentences like "Five (5) boreholes were drilled, three (3) completed with monitoring wells.... Three (3) groundwater samples were collected and analyzed for..." whatever it was.

I'm not proud of such uniprose, but the alternative would be "Our field technician [or even "Field Technician so-and-so"] together with so-and-so from Drilling Company X, installed three (3) monitoring wells..."

If something went wrong, the implication of such constructions would be that Field Technician so-and-so, or Drilling Company X, was ultimately responsible. So the point of the passive voice in such contexts is not to evade responsibility -- the client knows that our company did the environmental investigation, after all. The point is to place it where it belongs, i.e. on me (if I'm the project manager), and secondarily on the company collectively if (God forbid) something drastic did go wrong.

[ 30 July 2004: Message edited by: 'lance ]


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al-Qa'bong
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posted 30 July 2004 04:46 PM      Profile for al-Qa'bong   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
When I was teaching, I used to call the passive voice the bureaucratic voice, and made up all kinds of funny civil-service evasions for my kids

Small world. That's what I call it and what I do. I let my kids know, however, that there are uses for the passive voice, as in when you're trying to get out of trouble or to not get pinned down on an answer.


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James
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posted 30 July 2004 04:46 PM      Profile for James        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"Perhaps some of my posts have given offence"

No, that doesn't qualify as true passive voice, does it ?

"Offence has been taken to some of my posts"

[ 30 July 2004: Message edited by: JamesR ]


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paxamillion
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posted 30 July 2004 04:51 PM      Profile for paxamillion   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by JamesR:
"Offence has been taken to some of my posts"

Or, perhaps the offense has been overlooked.


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Hinterland
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posted 30 July 2004 04:53 PM      Profile for Hinterland        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Grammatically, there's no "subject", only a verb and an object.

Total time-wasting, show-off quibble:

Grammatically, there is a subject. In "Mistakes were made", "Mistakes" is the subject according to the grammar of the language. Objectively, there is also a subject, in that it's impossible to imagine a situation in which "mistakes" were made without there being an actual subject (or 'agent' to get really technical). The passive voice is used to shift emphasis from the agent to the action and its consequences. German actually has grammatically "subjectless" verbs in the passive voice: In Im Auto wird nicht geraucht (no smoking in the car), there is no grammatical subject for the verb "wird" (will). It's a very oblique way of saying "you can't smoke in the car", "no one can smoke in the car", "smoking is not allowed in the car", without being personally or directly authoritarian.

...yes, the passive voice is evil. It enables evil.

[ 30 July 2004: Message edited by: Hinterland ]


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skdadl
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posted 30 July 2004 04:57 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Now you've got it, James. Please lose it at once, though.

But 'lance, I think that that is a legit use -- ie, in your line of work. In my classes, I used to start off talking about the passive by saying, Now, you all remember how you were taught to write in the passive in chemistry lab when you were writing up your lab reports? *cheerful, hopeful smiley*

And I would be met by blank stares. *frazzled smiley*

My students had never been so taught. Never.


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skdadl
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posted 30 July 2004 04:59 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"Rauchen ist verboten!"

Great line from the film Julia.

Jane Fonda did some great smoking in that film.


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Tim
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posted 30 July 2004 05:03 PM      Profile for Tim     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Does it also have to do with students being taught (maybe this is changing) that one should never ever use personal pronouns in an academic essay? Though this can also lead to pompous statements like "This author believes..." rather than passive voice.
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'lance
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posted 30 July 2004 05:04 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
My students had never been so taught. Never.

Had never been taught to write that way in chemistry labs, or never been taught any chemistry?

Sometimes I despair of the education system, in particular that it tends to produce groups of people who don't understand each others' language.

Sometimes too I despair of the sort of prose that bosses and clients expect me to churn out. The best thing about it is that it's easy to be considered a good writer in this trade. I mean, here I am, surrounded by...

('lance lowers voice to a stage whisper)

...engineers.

Of course, being considered a good writer in this trade, plus $2.00 exact cash fare, will get me on the C-train.

quote:
Though this can also lead to pompous statements like "This author believes..." rather than passive voice.

Dear Lord, I'm so glad that most print journalists no longer use "This reporter..." or "This reviewer...". I hate, hate, hate that.

[ 30 July 2004: Message edited by: 'lance ]


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skdadl
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posted 30 July 2004 05:13 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This babbler says g'night, all.

Hey, aren't you guys going to contribute some to swallow's short history of the passive? A li'l something from your favourite historical catastrophe? So's I can have some inspiration demain matin?


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'lance
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posted 30 July 2004 05:18 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Hey, aren't you guys going to contribute some to swallow's short history of the passive?

Oh, right.

1209, Beziers. "It being determined that God in His Heaven would recognize His own, the inhabitants of the town were dispatched thither." Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux.

[ 30 July 2004: Message edited by: 'lance ]


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al-Qa'bong
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posted 30 July 2004 05:22 PM      Profile for al-Qa'bong   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There was an arrival, things were seen and were conquered.

quote:
I mean, here I am, surrounded by...

('lance lowers voice to a stage whisper)

...engineers.


Try telling a classroom of engineering students (well, the Electricals and Mechanicals are pretty good, but the Chemicals...yikes!) that they should try to write as if they were human beings.

Many kids come out of high school believing that they should extricate themselves from the written page. I tell them that it's OK to say "I" when they write.

[ 30 July 2004: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]


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'lance
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posted 30 July 2004 05:25 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hell, "Carthago delenda est" is in the passive voice, I suppose.
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James
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posted 30 July 2004 05:40 PM      Profile for James        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Technical question : Is the MSWord "grammer tool" overly sensitive to the passive voice, or is it just me ? I have always been conplimented on my letter writing style, yet MSWord is constantly urging changes to phrasing that, to me, sounds quite pedestrian.
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Hinterland
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posted 30 July 2004 05:44 PM      Profile for Hinterland        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
1209, Beziers. "It being determined that God in His Heaven would recognize His own, the inhabitants of the town were dispatched thither." Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux.

God, you must have lactated with stifled anticipation all day waiting to be able to spring THAT on us, eh?

..edited to add:

[ 30 July 2004: Message edited by: Hinterland ]


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'lance
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posted 30 July 2004 06:34 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
God, you must have lactated with stifled anticipation all day waiting to be able to spring THAT on us, eh?

Please to keep the names straight. 'lance, not God.


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bittersweet
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posted 30 July 2004 07:01 PM      Profile for bittersweet     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"And light happened, and it was seen as Good."

Etc., until, "And on the Seventh Day, there was rest."


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Anchoress
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posted 30 July 2004 08:34 PM      Profile for Anchoress     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by JamesR:
Technical question : Is the MSWord "grammer tool" overly sensitive to the passive voice, or is it just me ? I have always been conplimented on my letter writing style, yet MSWord is constantly urging changes to phrasing that, to me, sounds quite pedestrian.

You can modify the level of accuracy demanded by the grammar checker. I believe the choice are:

1. Grade four language arts teacher
2. Sexually-unfulfilled career administrative assistant
3. Grad student
4. Backpacker
5. High-school drop out
6. Average American


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Grover
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posted 03 August 2004 08:51 AM      Profile for Grover     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Use of the passive voice is very common in any kind of technical writing for the reasons 'lance described.
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skdadl
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posted 03 August 2004 08:57 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Do you know, though, Grover, whether it is being taught in high schools as such -- that is, is its legit purpose in scientific and technical writing clearly explained there? I think that that would be the best time and place to do it.

Anchoress: hee.


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lagatta
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posted 03 August 2004 10:08 AM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A Nazi comparison! A translation of the minutes of the infamous Wannsee Conference at which the "Final Solution" was decided - the classic example of banalised evil in the form of "office speak".
I believe there are passives - alas I can't re-read it all as one of my eyes is hurt an I have a hard time reading on the screen.

I think I got dust in it from construction next door to my house...


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 03 August 2004 11:14 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Anchoress:
2. Sexually-unfulfilled career administrative assistant

Hey! You say that like it's a bad thing!

(Time for another BWAGA meeting yet? We don't have anything better to do, do we? )


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged

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