RE: Preposition at Beginning or End?

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Lauren wrote: 
 
> I hate that first one too because it is passive, but it puts 
> things in the right order and the second sentence does not.  
> But really there is an action to activate the country list, 
> so I prefer to aim for the actions that are involved and 
> write in the active voice. So...
> 
> Sentence No. 3: "Click the Country drop-down list and select USA." 

That's a pretty good alternative, but the reasoning behind it is
mistaken. 

Sentence 1 is not passive. It uses the second person imperative verb
"select" (just as Sentence 3 does). The subject is the understood "you"
(a characteristic of the imperative mood). The object of the sentence,
"USA," is the object of the action, and the subject of the sentence
performs the action. That's active voice (just like Sentence 3). 

Passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is the object of the
action. Here's a passive versions of Sentence 1:

"From the Country drop-down list, USA should be selected."

There'll be a quiz later. ;-)

Richard


------
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------




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