Venture capitalists Menlo Ventures have released what purports to be a survey: “2025: The State of Consumer AI”. That is, chatbots. [Menlo Ventures] The subtitle is: “AI’s Consumer Tipping Po…
Writing advisers have been condemning the English passive since the early 20th century. I provide an informal but comprehensive syntactic description of passive clauses in English, and then exhibit numerous published examples of incompetent criticism in which critics reveal that they cannot tell passives from actives. Some seem to confuse the grammatical concept with a rhetorical one involving inadequate attribution of agency or responsibility, but not all examples are thus explained. The specific stylistic charges leveled against the passive are entirely baseless.
This article is wild already, on the first page there’s this quote
‘Do not use the passive voice when such use makes a statement clumsy and wordy. . .
Do not, by using the passive voice, leave the agent of the verb vaguely indicated, when the agent should be clearly identified.’ [Edwin Woolley, Handbook of Composition, 1907, p. 20]
Emphasis mine on… a clear usage of the passive! In active this would have to be “when you should clearly identify the agent” or something of the like, the fuck, how hard is it to not expose your whole ass like this mate
@V0ldek This is a hill I will die on: the passive voice ABSOLUTELY does not belong in a work of fiction. (Academic papers and reports are another matter entirely, but fiction: no.)
Section Three of the Official Secrets Act (1916) is our principle weapon in the endless war against security leaks. It was passed during a wartime spy scare—a time of deep and extreme paranoia—and it’s even more bizarre than most people think.
The Atrocity Archives, p. 13 of the Ace paperback edition
The glamour’s still there, masking her physical shape, but what I’m seeing now is unfogged by implanted emotional bias.
The Jennifer Morgue, p. 92 of the Golden Gryphon hardcover
I just found out, that a girl got killed here last week, and you knew it! You knew there was a shark out there!
Is it true that most people get attacked by sharks in three feet of water about ten feet from the beach?
The torso has been severed in mid-thorax; there are no major organs remaining… May I have a glass of water, please?
What we didn’t know… was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent.
I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up… bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well… he’d been bitten in half below the waist.
The quest for the Grail is not archaeology; it’s a race against evil! If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the Earth! Do you understand me?
Doing the tour of other fiction books within arm’s reach…
My name is Hermann Soergel. The curious reader may have chanced to leaf through my Shakespeare Chronology, which I once considered essential to a proper understanding of the text; it was translated into several languages, including Spanish.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Shakespeare’s Memory” (translated by Andrew Hurley)
When her father had been executed, her aunts and uncles on both sides of the family had declined to speak out against his killers, and Nasim had been so angry that she’d cut herself off from everyone, even before she and her mother had fled.
Greg Egan, Zendegi (this, like the Jennifer Morgue example, was on the page to which I opened at random)
Now the mayor’s cousin has been arrested for murder.
John Chernega, “Almond”, in Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die
Older books, also within arm’s reach, also opened at random…
Whatever was thought, whatever was said, I had my full reward in John’s friendship. This friendship was the more precious for its tenderness being intentionally concealed, especially when we were not alone, by that gruffness which stems from what can be termed the dignity of the heart.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
I was set apart by Nature to live alone, and draw comfort from her breast, and hers only.
Perhaps the Mysteries’ secrets could be learned, and their powers could be thwarted.
Bill Watterson and John Kascht, The Mysteries
The girl and her companion obediently fell silent then, realizing they had been heard through the microphones embedded in the walls of the dining room.
Only a few of them had been wounded; here and there you saw one stepping gingerly, leaning on a crutch or two canes, but so far on toward recovery that his face had color.
Dorothy Parker, “Soldiers Of The Republic”
Suppose they never get counted—what’s the worst that can happen? If the number of imaginary sheep in this world remains a matter of guesswork, who is richer or poorer for it?
“The Little Hours”
In her twenties, after the deferred death of a hazy widowed mother, she had been employed as a model in a wholesale dress establishment—it was still the day of the big woman, and she was then prettily colored and high-breasted.
My immediate gut reaction to a rule as general as this is that there’s fat chance it’s universally applicable, there will always be cases where active would be clunky.
Like I can’t imagine an RPG protagonist exclaiming that “Someone trapped this chest!” instead of the 100% more natural “This chest was trapped!”
@V0ldek That’s an RPG protagonist protagging. Not prose fiction. (This thought brought to you b/c I’ve lately been reading a multivolume LitRPG epic that I had to bail on midway through book 3 because the author dropped into passive voice with extreme clunkiness at random, infrequent intervals, making for a jarring read.)
I struggled with passive wording until I learned certain tells like my use of the word “would”. Once you learn what words to look out for you start to actively reword things as you write them. Asking AI to rework your passive tone isn’t going to rewire your brain to write better.
I pay. Shits helping me with missing commas and reworking my passive wording… Which I do a lot…
FTFY.
I pay. Shit’s helping me with missing commas and reworking my passive wording, which I do a lot.
http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf
Wait what, TIL there was/is a crusade against… the passive fucking voice?
Some people just need to invent problems for their life to feel meaningful, don’t they
This article is wild already, on the first page there’s this quote
Emphasis mine on… a clear usage of the passive! In active this would have to be “when you should clearly identify the agent” or something of the like, the fuck, how hard is it to not expose your whole ass like this mate
@V0ldek
I think the crusade is mostly against media headlines and content that passive-voices police brutality and murder of Palestinians by the IDF.
@V0ldek This is a hill I will die on: the passive voice ABSOLUTELY does not belong in a work of fiction. (Academic papers and reports are another matter entirely, but fiction: no.)
The Atrocity Archives, p. 13 of the Ace paperback edition
The Jennifer Morgue, p. 92 of the Golden Gryphon hardcover
Doing the tour of other fiction books within arm’s reach…
Jorge Luis Borges, “Shakespeare’s Memory” (translated by Andrew Hurley)
Greg Egan, Zendegi (this, like the Jennifer Morgue example, was on the page to which I opened at random)
John Chernega, “Almond”, in Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die
Older books, also within arm’s reach, also opened at random…
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure
Bill Watterson and John Kascht, The Mysteries
Lois Lowry, Son
Dorothy Parker, “Soldiers Of The Republic”
“The Little Hours”
“Big Blonde”
My immediate gut reaction to a rule as general as this is that there’s fat chance it’s universally applicable, there will always be cases where active would be clunky.
Like I can’t imagine an RPG protagonist exclaiming that “Someone trapped this chest!” instead of the 100% more natural “This chest was trapped!”
@V0ldek That’s an RPG protagonist protagging. Not prose fiction. (This thought brought to you b/c I’ve lately been reading a multivolume LitRPG epic that I had to bail on midway through book 3 because the author dropped into passive voice with extreme clunkiness at random, infrequent intervals, making for a jarring read.)
no it isn’t, your posts are still shit
Whoa, calm down everyone. 😅
no ❤️
I struggled with passive wording until I learned certain tells like my use of the word “would”. Once you learn what words to look out for you start to actively reword things as you write them. Asking AI to rework your passive tone isn’t going to rewire your brain to write better.
good use of AI if it’s doing it correctly. GJ honestly.