“How to use the passive voice”

At the OUPblog, Edwin L. Battistella writes about how to use the passive voice. He zooms in on a familiar target:

Writing instructors and books often inveigh against the passive voice. My thrift-store copy of Strunk and White’s 1957 Elements of Style says “Use the Active Voice,” explaining that it is “more direct and vigorous than the passive.”

Like the passive voice, The Elements of Style (1959 not 1957) has become an easy target. But the book offers more nuance on the passive voice that Battistella allows. Yes, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White offer “Use the active voice” (no cap on active or voice) as an “elementary principle of composition.” But they immediately qualify this maxim: the active voice is “usually more direct and vigorous than the passive” (my emphasis). And: “This rule does not, of course, mean that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary.”

Like Battistella, Strunk and White recognize that a writer’s emphasis will determine the choice of voice. Battistella says that the choice of passive voice puts “the focus on the object of the action rather than the subject.” Strunk and White give two sample sentences to show exactly that:

The dramatists of the Restoration are little esteemed today.

Modern readers have little esteem for the dramatists of the Restoration.

The first would be the preferred form in a paragraph on the dramatists of the Restoration; the second, in a paragraph on the tastes of modern readers. The need of making a particular word the subject of the sentence will often, as in these examples, determine which voice is to be used.

The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible writing.

Granted, Battistella goes on to enumerate more contexts in which the passive voice is appropriate. But I think it would be difficult for him, or for any writer, to disagree with Strunk and White’s conclusion: “The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible [forceful?] writing.” Or as William Zinsser puts it, “The difference between an active-verb style and a passive-verb style — in clarity and vigor — is the difference between life and death for a writer.” Any teacher who has seen student-writers work to strip all sense of agency from their sentences (“It will be argued that,” “It is observed that”) understands the point of “Use the active voice.”

Related reading
All OCA Elements of Style posts (Pinboard)
Oliver Kamm on The Elements of Style and the passive voice
Steven Pinker on The Elements of Style and the passive voice
Geoffrey Pullum on The Elements of Style and the passive voice

[I’m not a fan of The Elements of Style as a resource for teachers, but I think it’s important to distinguish what the book says from what folklore says the book says. For instance: Geoffrey Pullum’s claim that Strunk and White prohibit adjectives and adverbs. All Elements of Style quotations are from the 1959 edition that Battistella cites. The Zinsser quotation is from On Writing Well (2001). I left a much shorter version of this post as a comment at OUPblog, where it has yet to appear.]

Domestic comedy

“Trisha Yearwood! What does she know about flooring?”

“She uses it.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[We were watching a commercial.]

Selected titles

Some of the titles Talia removed from a bookshelf during her visit:

Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking
J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?
Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking

All age-appropriate, when you think about it. The kid is on the go. “Go.”

Philadelphia Solari

From NPR’s All Things Considered: “Fans of an Iconic Philly Rail Sign Are Rallying to Save It from Retirement.” The sign in question is a flip board, aka a split-flap display, aka a Solari board.

Related posts
Solari board : Solari e Tufte

Notebook sightings: The Racket

[Robert Mitchum as Captain Thomas McQuigg, William Talman as Officer Bob Johnson, Virginia Huston as Lucy Johnson. From The Racket (dir. John Cromwell, 1951). Click for larger notebooks.]

Good cops use pocket notebooks. And they don’t waste time posing so some camera jockey gets a better shot of the notebook. There’s a racket to be fought.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : Cat People : City Girl : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Time Table : T-Men : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window

Reading, really fast

I learned yesterday that for some English majors, it’s now a point of pride to go really fast when reading aloud, with little or no regard for phrasing or intonation. Why is going fast a point of pride? Because so many students cannot read aloud with much fluency.

These fast readers are like touch typists of reading. But reading aloud isn’t typing.

A political thought

The last thing Democrats need to do is to turn the 2020 presidential election into a battle between oldsters. Such a battle will do little to spark voter interest and much to spark parody. Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren: no.

What the Democratic Party needs is a candidate who offers a sharp contrast to Donald Trump not only in policy but in affect. Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke: yes.

A Mongol sighting

[Robert Bice as a police dispatcher. From The Racket (dir. John Cromwell, 1951). Click for a larger view.]

It looks like — is it? Hard to tell. Hit Pause. Look closely. Yes, it’s a Mongol pencil. The ferrule is the giveaway: dark, shiny, dark. Click for a larger view and you, too, can be sure.

I rediscovered the Eberhard Faber Mongol, the pencil of my childhood, in the early 1990s, after I stopped smoking cigarettes and became an ever more dedicated stationery fiend. I like Mongols, on my desk or in the movies. And yes, I also noticed the cigarette in the dispatcher’s hand.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)

Resolution 2019

[Reposted, with the year changed, from January 1, 2018.]

I’m thinking about resolution, as a frame of mind, as “determination; firmness or steadfastness of purpose; the possession of a resolute or unyielding cast of mind.”

Not “Drink more water,” though that’s probably always a good idea. Not “Binge more,” as heard on a T-Mobile commercial yesterday morning.

I’m determined to be resolute in 2019, to not yield to cultural or political despair, to maintain a sense of humor and irreverence as appropriate, to maintain a sense of reverence as appropriate, to speak up and out when the occasion calls for it, and to do what I can in my very limited sphere of influence to make a better world. How about you?

And with regard to American democracy, I’m thinking about another kind of resolution:

the subsiding or cessation of a pathological process, disease, symptom, etc.; spec . the termination of inflammation, esp. without suppuration or permanent damage to tissue.

See? Still a sense of humor and irreverence. Happy New Year.

[Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary.]

A 2019 calendar

[Peanuts, January 1, 1972.]

Here is one last pitch for a free, ultra-dowdy calendar, three months to a page, made by me, available from my Dropbox. Print, staple, and navigate a year's worth of time. In Gill Sans Bold, licorice and cayenne (black and dark red), with a few holidays and one mystery birthday marked in pleasing colors. Works on bulletin boards, refrigerators, and other solid surfaces. Visible across a crowded or sparsely populated room. While supplies last!