🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct6.152841.13733@bcrka451.bnr.ca> nadeau@bnr.ca (Rheal Nadeau) writes:
>> [some stuff about Cats and Tables omitted]
>>Notice that the first sentence is passive and the second, active.  "Was" is
>>an element in many passive constructions.  For that reason alone, hunting and
>>rewriting is a good idea.  (P.S. could I write this paragraph without using
>>"is?" :) )
>
>Could you write this without "is"?  How about:
> [more stuff omitted]
>Done as a quick exercise only - there is still room for improvement
>(uh, make that, these sentences could still be improved).
                                             ^^^^^^^^^^
:-)

>Now, the capital question - are my alternate versions really an
>improvement as far as the reader is concerned?

Good question.  This depends highly on the text involved and what the writer
was trying to say.  We prefer active to passive voice simply because active
is clearer, more forceful, and, uh, active!!  But this does not mean that the
passive voice does not have its importance: a writer or speaker may use it
intentionally when the subject isn't known, to highlight something other
than the subject, or to provide some intentional ambiguity.  The author may
desire ambiguity -- I would guess that Federal Documents have this to 
diffuse the blame :-) -- but whether that ambiguity is really necessary in
most cases, is arguable.

Writing tangly prose presents fewer difficulties than writing vigorously
and concisely, mostly, I would assume, because clear prose requires thinking.
A badly written article often indicates fuzzy or incomplete thinking.
The same goes for many of the articles I have seen in the Computer Science
Journals, where the author will disguise his poor thinking with lots of
nasty mathematics.  However, not everybody has recognised that mathematics
is just another language used to express thought, and like English (or any
other language) follows basic rhetorical principles to convey information.
A page of difficult mathematics often makes the writer look learned and
knowledgeable (not to mention smart), but I often feel disappointed when
having carefully looked over the article, discovering that what the mathematics
describes is not only rubbish, but useless rubbish at that.  

DY :-)

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