Re: E-Primer

[Dean Elzinga <elzinga -at- INFERENCE -dot- COM>]

> From: "Barbara J. Philbrick" <burkbrick -at- AOL -dot- COM>

> I'm ambivalent on this issue, but some people are fanatic. I met a technical
> writer once who poked his head over my cube, said "Do you use passive voice?"
> I had no quick, qualified answer, but mumbled something about "Yes, I do." He
> immediately said, "Passive voice should be eliminated." How's that for a
> first-time greeting?

I assume it was a joke, since it was phrased in the passive.  Plus it
sounds like a quote from that famous list of writers' rules, each of
which breaks its own dictum.  "Avoid cliches like the plague."
Perhaps a dry, ironic witticism is a strange first greeting.

> I've never seen him again, but I want to know: how do you avoid the Hollywood
> personal trainer sound? And how do you avoid sounding accusing?

> For example, how else could John Sununu (remember him?) have kept from
> implicating himself or others other than by saying "Some mistakes were made"?

"People made mistakes."  But Sununu's example shows exactly why many
writers deplore the passive voice.  It clouds the action and obscures
the actor.  If that's what you want, use the passive.

> How do you say "The program manager window is now displayed" without going
> into gory detail like "Windows now displays the program manager." This isn't
> so bad once, but I'm doing a step-wise manual for a Windows application, and
> if every other sentence starts like this, I think it would get tedious to
> read. Plus, I think people just don't care what's causing something to
> happen.

"The program manager appears."  Some people complain that this sounds
like magic, but I don't buy it.  But frankly, I think your original
wording sounds fine.  "The program manager is displayed."  After all,
as you point out, the actor  unimportant here.  At times like this,
I let the passive voice do its job.  The rest of the time, I use the
active voice.

--Dean Elzinga
elzinga -at- inference -dot- com