Re: Why is Microsoft Word Complaining About This Sentence?

T.H. Entity wrote

A few tips on the avoidance of the completely unnecessary use of the
passive:-

1. a. Passive. The variation of yy with xx is shown in Figure 7.
b. Active. Figure 7 displays a graph of yy against xx.
You can easily identify a writer who habitually overuses the passive, by
the
force of habit which causes him to write 1a instead of 1b. Check some of
your old technical reports. If you are frequently writing 1a instead of
1b,
you have a problem that you need to correct.

I disagree. The reader doesn't want to know what's in Figure 7 but
where to find the graph -- not the same thing at all. This is actually
a good example of when I think the passive *is* preferable to the
active.

If the passive must be avoided at all costs -- albeit on purely
superstitious grounds -- then "For the variation of yy with xx, see
Figure 7" would at least keep the payload of the sentence up front,
where it belongs.

Usually, the statement "Figure 7 displays a graph of yy against xx" does not
appear out of the blue. Instead, this type of statement usually follows a
discussion of why you were interested in the relationship of yy to xx, or
how you measured this relationship. Immediately following on from this
discussion, the plain-English way to direct the reader to the relevant graph
is (I claim) by using the active voice in te following arrangement:-
Discussion of yy and xx, followed by "Figure 7 displays a graph of yy
against xx".

I agree that if the information does come out of the blue with no
pre-cursor - such things do occasionally happen - your remarks are valid and
"The variation of yy with xx is shown in Figure 7" might well be preferable
in these circumstances. It would, as you say, keep the payload of the
sentence up front.

Another indicator of the excessive use of the passive, which I forgot to
mention in my previous posting, is the following type of sentence:-
a. Passive case. The earth is kept in orbit by the gravitational attraction
of the sun.
b. Active case. The gravitational attraction of the sun keeps the earth in
orbit.

The main purpose of the passive case is to avoid the inappropriate use of
"I" or "we". When describing the sovereign universe[1], the concept of "I"
or "we" is irrelevant, and should be avoided. But when describing the
observed interaction between two parts of the sovereign universe (the sun
and the earth, in the above example), why do we need to continue in the
passive voice? Authors who do describe such interactions in the form (a) are
using an unnecessarily complicated construction in their writing, for no
good reason. Life is already complicated enough, without that.

[1] See my earlier posting for my explanation of what I mean by the
"sovereign universe".

Richard Chambers Leeds UK.


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