Posted by Peter Ceresole on January 28, 2008 at 13:06:22 from 80.176.146.133 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Grammar posted by Jock on January 28, 2008 at 09:52:46:
A last bastion of passive voice usage can be found in our science labs
Yes, and doesn't it make experiment reports far more tedious than they need be? I suffered for years from having to read that word-wooze.
Ironically, one of my favourite novelists (Anthony Powell) uses the passive voice to such an extent that when I started to read the first book of his, I almost gave up. Fortunately his use of character and incident is so brilliant that I was sucked in, and now re-read his 'Dance to the Music of Time' more than any other set of books. Luckily there are twelve books in the series, so it's not at all painful to work round and round them. But I've never been able to stand any of his other books, where the characters and plot simply fail to overcome my irritation at his writerly convolutions.
One of my real pleasures in reading AR is his splendidly spare style of writing.