{"id":243,"date":"2019-03-22T20:40:58","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T20:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/2019\/03\/22\/passives-are-peaceful\/"},"modified":"2019-03-22T20:40:58","modified_gmt":"2019-03-22T20:40:58","slug":"passives-are-peaceful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/es\/2019\/03\/22\/passives-are-peaceful\/","title":{"rendered":"Passives are Peaceful, not Limp"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-218 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Passives-300x218.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"218\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">In my latest article on the ATA Chronicle, the flagship publication of the American Translators Association, I explore passive voice. The title of the article is &#8220;Passive Voices Peace: Reconsidering the Ban on the Passive Voice in Your Writing.&#8221; Just yesterday, I experienced how relevant this is when I had to stop a writing coach in their tracks for propagating the poor advice that passive should be replaced by active voice to make the writing more vivid.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\n\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">We all know that &#8220;mistakes were made&#8221; is an infelicitous phrase, but hiding the agent is not at all all the passive is good for. The advice I mentioned shows exactly why the passive is powerful. The author wrote: &#8220;I was given the news that I had stage 4 cancer.&#8221; The coach suggested: &#8220;Doctors gave me the news that&#8230; or better yet, Doctor so and so gave me the news that&#8230;&#8221; No! Who cares which doctor! (No disrespect to medical professionals dishing out the news and caring for the patients.) The patient&#8211;quite literally&#8211;is at the center of this story! That&#8217;s one of the uses of the passive: to front the theme of a transitive event and push the damn agent to the side. In a culture obsessed with agency, it does seem like a strange idea. But, as philosopher Julia Kristeva explained, the passive gives voice to the disenfranchised. I&#8217;d add it gives voice to those on the receiving end, whether exploited or exalted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\n\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">Another use of the passive is to lighten the processing effort of a reader when an agent requires a lengthy explanation, as in this partial summary of This Is Us (yes, I watch it): &#8220;The baby, Jack told his wife, had been brought to the hospital by a fireman, who had been dissuaded from ad[ting the child himself.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\n\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">Perhaps the more playful use of the passive is to shine light on the damn subject by introducing it last. I love this example, which I borrowed from a Twitter post: &#8220;Whole Foods, who packs a month\u2019s supply of food in a paper bag, was bought by Amazon, who ships a paper clip in a refrigerator box.&#8221; Tell me the truth, it wouldn&#8217;t have had the same effect if Amazon was the subject of that sentence, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\n\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">One last nerdy point for those grammar lovers out there: the passive creates symmetry between transitive and intransitive verbs. Intransitive verbs can have agents as subjects, as in &#8220;The storm roared on.&#8221; Or they can have themes as subjects (which ordinarily function as objects of transitive sentences), as in &#8220;The city collapsed.&#8221; So, for transitive verbs, we can do the same thing by inverting the syntactic order of agent and theme in active and passive voice, as in &#8220;The storm destroyed the city&#8221; and &#8220;The city was destroyed by the storm.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\n\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">Think about a story where you are questioning city officials for infrastructure maintenance: &#8220;The city was destroyed by the storm&#8221; might be your choice. Now, if you are writing about climate change, &#8220;The storm destroyed the city&#8221; may serve you better. Active versus passive voice is simply a tool to align the topic of your sentence with the topic of your message. Use it, don&#8217;t let it be misunderstood!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my latest article on the ATA Chronicle, the flagship publication of the American Translators Association, I explore passive voice. The title of the article is &#8220;Passive Voices Peace: Reconsidering the Ban on the Passive Voice in Your Writing.&#8221; Just yesterday, I experienced how relevant this is when I had to stop a writing coach [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,10,12],"tags":[7,9,11,13],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar","category-passive-voice","category-plain-language","category-writing","tag-grammar","tag-passive-voice","tag-plain-language","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plainlii.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}