A recent usage thread turned to the old question of the passive voice. Many people recommend that you turn the passive voice -- "The action was done by this person" (the object was verbed by the subject) or just "The action was done" -- into the active voice, "This person did this action" (the subject verbed the object).
This is generally good advice. Passive voice often makes writing less direct and thus less forceful: "Passive voice should be avoided by you" is worse than "Avoid the passive voice." It also sometimes conceals responsibility, as in the famous "Mistakes were made" used as a substitute for "We made mistakes."
But when it comes to writing, unwise editors often turn good general advice into a bad categorical rule. So it is here: "Generally avoid the passive voice" is good, "never use the passive voice" is bad.
In particular, if your discussion focuses more on the object than on the subject (the actor), it's often better to use the passive voice, which has a similar focus. If you’re writing about the substance of the USA Patriot Act, for instance, the passive sentence "The Act was adopted shortly after the September 11 attacks" may be better than the active "Congress adopted the Act shortly after the September 11 attacks." The passive voice properly focuses the discussion on the Act, where you want it to be, rather than on Congress, which is not terribly relevant to your thesis. (Of course, if you were writing about Congressional decisionmaking related to the Act, "Congress adopted ..." may be exactly right -- but again the point is to choose the voice that fits what you want to emphasize, not to mechanically make everything active.)
Of course, they are made all the time. (non-obfuscatory use of the passive voice) If we have even a casual interest in the matter, don't we usually want to know who made them?
But overall, I agree with EV. There is a place for passive voice. But we should use the passive voice sparingly.
How about: The former S&L head Charles Keating received a ten-year prison sentence for cheating …”
That is fine, too, but I think it is fine because it contains all the information it needs and is clear about it. I don't think it gains much from, technically, being active. The public official who screws up and says, "mistakes were made" is being just as mealy-mouthed if he uses the active "mistakes occured" or "subsequent events revealed errors."
The choice can also focus meaning in other ways. If I say "Scooter Libby was indicted for allegedly shuffling a deck of cards, Patrick Fitzgerald announced" I am starting off on a slightly different footing than "A federal grand jury indicted Scooter Libby for allegedly shuffling a deck of cards." If I don't like Libby or want to defend Fitzgerald against a charge of prosecutorial bias, I'd go for the latter, letting the word "jury" conjure in the readers mind a panel of ordinary citizens deciding that charges should be brought.
Best of all is if someone opens up a little and helps make the choice for you. "A federal judge sentenced Joe Jones to 10 years in prison today, labelling the disgraced S&L chief 'a gangrenous limb that needs to be sawn off society before the infection spreads too far and the stench overwhelms us all."
"I'm gonna do the job and this clothes-pin on my nose isn't getting in my way," growled US District Judge Fred etc.
I wouldn't suggest this change as a way of avoiding the weaknesses of the passive voice. It is good for other things, but it doesn't remedy the source of weakness in the simpler "The Patriot Act was passed ... " which is no mention of who wrote, proposed, passed, backed, criticized, signed or implemented the thing. But it adds a meaning, "quickly on the heels" suggests, without explaining, some element of speed or hastiness. If you want to add that meaning, then it is good, but you want to be careful adding meanings while trying to avoid an otherwise fine sentence construction.
18 U.S.C. 1030: Your point was obvious--and a good one. I was merely having a little bit of fun.
Indeed, I deliberately used the passive voice in the second paragraph of that post--and no one noticed ("There is place for passive voice").
We agree on the substance.
"Defendant was convicted of three counts of unlawful sexual contact with livestock within 1000 feet of a CAFO, a Class C felony" is better than "The jury convicted Defendant of..." because the crucial parts of the sentence are the conviction, the crime, and the penalty. It doesn't matter - in this case - that the jury did the convicting...and so that fact is extraneous and best left out. (Obviously, if for some reason it were important that the jury did the convicting, it would be a mistake to use the passive...)
However, while I recognize that the passive does have it's place, in my experience it is still overused...
The original example already included the element of speed: "The Act was adopted shortly after the September 11 attacks." One problem with the passive voice is that it often hides the actor. Another problem lies simply in its passivity. Reading the passive voice is boring. My rewrite of the example tried only to move the sense of the original to the active voice without adding the actor.
I think of the Iraq war news, where we see things like "10 people were killed," rather than "bombers killed 10 people." In this context, the use of passive voice serves not to focus on the victims, but rather to deemphasize the bombers.
Of course passive voice is sometimes useful (I used it extensively in my philosophy writings out of necessity), but more often than not passive voice is used to push an agenda rather than facts. It gives much more freedom to describe an event while omitting undesirable key facts.
-Q
Rarely, if ever, does the intended focus of a sentence force one to use the unattractive passive voice. Thus "The Patriot Act's adoption came shortly after the September 11 attacks" avoids the passive voice while still maintaining the intended focus.
"The adoption of the Patriot Act followed quickly on the heels of the September 11 attacks."
This is verbose because "on the heels of" means "followed quickly." Moreover, "The Patriot Act's adoption" reads more easily than "The adoption of the Patriot Act" because it eliminates a prepositional phrase.
So make it "The Patriot Act's adoption came on the heels of the September 11 attacks" or "The Patriot Act's adoption quickly followed the September 11 attacks."
Sorry, guys, this still doesn't make it in my book. It violates another useful principle by replacing a verb with a noun, and here it's a noun we're not even concerned about ("adoption", when what EV's original passive sentence was talking about was the Patriot Act). The original sentence was quite clear and expressed the author's meaning with a minimum of words. The only thing this rewrite does is to solve the supposed problem of the passive voice. It does not make the sentence clearer or more compact. Since the PV should not be viewed as always and everywhere a problem, the cost in the form of nouning up the sentence exceeds the benefit; as Fowler asked after canvassing various acrobatic ways to avoid splitting an infinitive, was the game worth the candle?
The real problem behind EV's complaint, though, is not just some rule or principle about the passive voice; it is the elevation of sensible principles and rules of thumb into mandatory rules that are applied dogmatically and with no sensitivity for the language.
The active voice does one thing. The passive voice does another. You use the one that does what you want. Right? When I go to fix something in my house, or my car, I don't have a rule that says "Never use an oil-filter wrench." Sometimes I have an oil filter that needs wrenchin'!
The Iraq example is interesting. Passive voice does put the emphasis on the victims rather than on the bombers, as wooga notes. I intend to keep an eye on this, as I am becoming very annoyed at the victim-centered trend in news coverage. Where have all the perpetrators gone? Covering only the victims is sob-sister stuff, and the only way they'll stop selling it is if we stop buying.
I often recommend my students (in Engineering, not Law) to avoid passive voice in reports:
* experiments were made
* a computer program was written
I usually want to know <i>who</i> conducted the experiment and <i>who</i> wrote the computer program - the student who wrote the report or someone else?
If any of my students wrote "mistakes were made", I'd expect the next sentences to explain the nature and impact of the mistakes, and how future mistakes would be avoided.
When he complained about the level of compliance, I told him to dump the progressive and make it clear what he wanted: "Fill out the form completely" and "Return the form by such-and-such a date."
He objected, saying it sounded like he was telling the school districts what to do. "Of course it does," I said. "You are. Have the decency be clear about it and about what the school district needs to do."
The clearer letter resulted in fewer late forms.
There is a place for the passive, but it is usually the enemy of clarity and brevity.