🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct7.115201.11214@nocusuhs.nnmc.navy.mil> yoshi@nocusuhs.nnmc.navy.mil (D M Yoshikami) writes:
>In article <1992Oct6.152841.13733@bcrka451.bnr.ca> nadeau@bnr.ca (Rheal Nadeau) writes:
>>
>>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).
>                                             ^^^^^^^^^^
>:-)

Oops!  :-)

>>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.

One thing I realized while doing my little exercise - writing "to be"
sentences is much easier - it's an undemanding structure.  Avoiding "to
be" made the writing much harder, because it removed much of the
ambiguity inherent in the vaguer sentences.  And bad writing showed up
more clearly in the be-less statements, too.  So "to be" can be an
efficient shortcut, but like many shortcuts it can easily lead us into
trouble . . .

This reminds of the great "goto" debate in computer programming - it is
generally believed that programs written without "goto" are "better"
than those with.  However, it is still quite possible to write very bad
programs without "goto", and very good ones with "goto".  The most that
can be said is that "goto" make it easier to do sloppy programming (oh,
I forgot this condition, OK, I'll just "goto" over-there and . . .).

In the end, the key is thinking through what you want to say, then
finding the words that best convey that messages.  (And while the
previous sentence uses "is", I doubt it would really be improved by
trying to avoid that.  Or:  I doubt we could really improve it by
trying to avoid that?  :-) )

The Rhealist - Rheal Nadeau - nadeau@bnr.ca - Speaking only for myself