tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post8636927348294591979..comments2023-12-15T23:33:59.034-06:00Comments on Cary Millsap: A Lesson in Writing from 1944Cary Millsaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16697498718050285274noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-37836231895201811342008-10-10T14:11:00.000-05:002008-10-10T14:11:00.000-05:00j: Exactly!j: Ex<EM>act</EM>ly!Cary Millsaphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16697498718050285274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-54595727220792360962008-10-10T13:33:00.000-05:002008-10-10T13:33:00.000-05:00Having edited technical documents, why do people a...Having edited technical documents, why do people always fall back on the passive voice as if it means something? Case in point, "A log will be generated." Generated by whom or what? A process? A server? A bunch of gnomes?<BR/><BR/>I applaud you for advocating use of the active voice for precision!Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08137856137797869665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-20406636376950602742008-10-07T11:54:00.000-05:002008-10-07T11:54:00.000-05:00Joel,Good article. I've found myself wanting to sa...Joel,<BR/><BR/>Good article. I've found myself wanting to say, "I believe..." and I've tried to stop just about every instance of it. First, of course "I believe" whatever it is I'm writing, so adding the words is just redundant. But, second—and I think this is the point of the UNC article—if I simply "believe" something, but I don't have the evidence to support it, then the statement probably has no place in my document.<BR/><BR/>I will say that, to my mind, there's at least one valid exception: when the whole point is to say that I believe something but cannot [yet] prove it, as an appeal to others who might be able to help.Cary Millsaphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16697498718050285274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-16754835536094769242008-10-06T16:24:00.000-05:002008-10-06T16:24:00.000-05:00I came into this backwards from Richard Foote's bl...I came into this backwards from Richard Foote's blog. Very interesting, I learned some new things. I was trained as a research scientist, and my initial reaction was similar to Pete Scott's - as I remembered it, the passive voice was the scientific way. On googling the subject, I see I'm way out of date. <BR/><BR/>But of course, I have to point you at the top of my search results, http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/sciences.html , which point out how bad it is to use things like "I believe" "do you see what I mean..." :-O<BR/><BR/>Can't win, can't break even, can't leave the game.<BR/><BR/>word: jnjzxnucJoel Garryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13325061229393838224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-468190884423261412008-10-06T08:59:00.000-05:002008-10-06T08:59:00.000-05:00JeffEisenhower was subtly mounting his campaign fo...Jeff<BR/>Eisenhower was subtly mounting his campaign for the presidency of the United States. ;)<BR/><BR/>Another book I would recommend to the readers and Cary would do the same is "The Minto Pyramid Principle". My writing has improved significantly after that.<BR/><BR/>Thanks<BR/>MaheshMaheshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03984773849590215351noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-62547725279144161682008-10-02T14:35:00.000-05:002008-10-02T14:35:00.000-05:00Eisenhower had to assert to U.S. citizens that HE ...Eisenhower had to assert to U.S. citizens that HE was in control of his troops, not Monty or anyone else. He and the rest of the command staff had to face criticism that U.S. troops were being commanded by non U.S. personell.<BR/><BR/>So, I don't particularly see Eisenhower as being brave in writing that he withdrew his troops. What he was trying to say is that he didn't wait for anyone else to withdraw THE troops.<BR/><BR/>BTW, they weren't Eisenhower's troops, they were the President's. So, again, his use of the possessive is an attempt to reinforce his affect on public opinion about who was in control of the troops.Jeffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02365994762779966623noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-40133092469922816762008-10-02T09:50:00.000-05:002008-10-02T09:50:00.000-05:00Jared, Richard, Mohamed, and Jonathan: Thank you v...Jared, Richard, Mohamed, and Jonathan: Thank you very much for your kind words and your contributions to this post.<BR/><BR/>Paul: Thank you for your note. Strunk & White's <EM>The Elements of Style</EM> has been a tremendously important influence in my professional life.Cary Millsaphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16697498718050285274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-74962666616627350972008-10-02T08:46:00.000-05:002008-10-02T08:46:00.000-05:00The Elements of style explains Active vs. Passive ...<A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-4th-William-Strunk/dp/0205313426" REL="nofollow">The Elements of style</A> explains Active vs. Passive voice.Brian Tkatchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11320700842381820277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-69629271526297539102008-10-02T03:35:00.000-05:002008-10-02T03:35:00.000-05:00Cary,What an inspiring post.Seeing a letter that s...Cary,<BR/><BR/>What an inspiring post.<BR/><BR/>Seeing a letter that shows one man stating categorically "I am responsible" for such an enormous eventuality is quite spine-tingling; and, as you say, seeing the deliberate change from "have been withdrawn" to "I have withdrawn" rams the point home even more clearly.<BR/><BR/>I also thought your commentary on active voice vs. passive voice, and the role of the passive as a tool for deception was masterly. <BR/><BR/>However, I would like to stand up for the passive voice just in case any of your readers get too keen on condemning it out of hand.<BR/><BR/>The general structure of the passive is: "subject verb agent". In my view, the use of the passive for "weaseling" depends largely on omitting the agent. It's not the appearance of the passive itself.<BR/><BR/>Here's a weasel use of the active:<BR/>"... and the troops have withdrawn."<BR/><BR/>Here's a non-weasel use of the passive - which makes the responsibility very clear:<BR/>"... and the troops have been withdrawn on my orders".<BR/><BR/>Here's another non-weasel use of the passive that (for subjective reasons) makes me WANT to use the active because the passive FEELS so clunky:<BR/><BR/>"... and the troops have been withdrawn by me."<BR/><BR/><BR/>The passive is harder to use well, it can be harder to read, and it does make it easier to avoid responsibility, confrontation, or understanding the topic - but it is not inherently a bad thing.<BR/><BR/>Or, putting it the other way round: people often use the passive badly, people often find it harder to read the passive, and responsibility, confrontation and the requirement to know your topic are easier to avoid if you use the passive.<BR/><BR/>Regards<BR/>Jonathan LewisAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-36620870233430091552008-10-02T03:27:00.000-05:002008-10-02T03:27:00.000-05:00Cary,Excellent!! I have been reading this blog art...Cary,<BR/><BR/>Excellent!! I have been reading this blog article for several days and each time I read it I feel that I haven't read it before. It is very sad for me that I can't find such kind of excellent articles in my mother tongues (Arabic and French) so that I can make my comments and my "internal" feeling in perfect synchronisation.<BR/><BR/>I don't think that employing active writing requires courage for those who will always consider them selves in a continuous learning process. If I made a mistake when employing active writing I will either be in one of the two situations (1) no one will point out this mistake or (2) my mistake will be pointed out and I will consider that I learned something new which will make my mistake not reproducible in my future active writing.<BR/><BR/>May be you have remarked that I didn’t employed a passive writing here and will from now on keep in this style of writing<BR/><BR/>Thanks a lot!<BR/><BR/>Mohamed<BR/><BR/>PS : Normandie (Normandy)Mohamed Hourihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11687776847553675567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-87989867228308761152008-10-01T09:27:00.000-05:002008-10-01T09:27:00.000-05:00Paul,Great catch...Here, the author could have mor...Paul,<BR/><BR/>Great catch...<BR/><BR/>Here, the author could have more directly said, "General Eisenhower mistakenly dated his note 'July' 5 instead of 'June' 5." That tells a clearer story with fewer words, doesn't it? And it actually does a better job of asking an obvious next question like, "How could General Eisenhower have made such a mistake?" ...Which would be an interesting fact to add, in my opinion.<BR/><BR/>I think many authors choose the passive voice in situations like this because it sounds less indicting, less confrontational. ...More polite. But I think sometimes, people choose to write with passive voice specifically because it creates less pressure to expand the scope of an article to things the author may not know or want to write about.Cary Millsaphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16697498718050285274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-47889376595868836652008-10-01T07:39:00.000-05:002008-10-01T07:39:00.000-05:00It's interesting that the note on the error in the...It's interesting that the note on the error in the date was itself in passive voice - "the message ... is mistakenly dated". Having just read your post, I immediately thought "who made the mistake?" and I was less prepared to accept the authority of the comment as a result.Paul Moorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17557923197983461835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-24437576307693243422008-10-01T07:17:00.000-05:002008-10-01T07:17:00.000-05:00Hi CaryGreat post !!It rings so very true from my ...Hi Cary<BR/><BR/>Great post !!<BR/><BR/>It rings so very true from my perspective. I thought I might add some of my thoughts and opinions on my blog (in as active voice as I could ;)<BR/><BR/>http://richardfoote.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/an-active-writing-lesson-battle-for-britain-the-letter/<BR/><BR/>Well done !!<BR/><BR/>RichardAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-77031882946702470942008-09-30T11:07:00.000-05:002008-09-30T11:07:00.000-05:00This strikes a responsive chord in me.For years in...This strikes a responsive chord in me.<BR/><BR/>For years in school (starting in grade school) it seems I was encouraged to write in passive voice.<BR/><BR/>"Too many I's" was a bad thing, the point being that I was trying to draw too much attention to myself as the writer, rather than the observer. <BR/><BR/>Maybe it was over-impressed on an impressionable young student, as <BR/>I <B>still</B> have a problem with that, sometimes going back over my writing (blog, email, whatever) and editing from active to passive.<BR/><BR/>I think I'm done doing that. Thanks for this blog post Cary, it was quite insightful.Jaredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09187267459019576469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-22004703485692683132008-09-29T14:44:00.000-05:002008-09-29T14:44:00.000-05:00Thanks again!Be sure to look for questions from me...Thanks again!<BR/>Be sure to look for questions from me when I'm trying to look for answers ;)Yet Another Mother Runnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01590619021049889904noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-87721206603409257312008-09-29T09:43:00.000-05:002008-09-29T09:43:00.000-05:00gnd,What Should I do to get there? Step 1: Find in...gnd,<BR/><BR/><EM>What Should I do to get there?</EM> Step 1: Find interesting problems.<BR/><BR/><EM>How do I know what I do not know yet?</EM> The easiest way is to put yourself in a situation where people are counting on you to find out answers to interesting problems. They will load you up with interesting questions. Over time, you may begin to generate more interesting questions yourself than other people will.<BR/><BR/><EM>I know I can find answers when I face an issue. But how do I find out if it is the right way?</EM> Learn how to measure the Right Things. I believe that the Right Things are things that are close to the customer. In software performance, for example, I believe that <EM>response time</EM> is more of a Right Thing to measure than utilization.Cary Millsaphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16697498718050285274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-14973641302978662152008-09-29T08:38:00.000-05:002008-09-29T08:38:00.000-05:00Thanks, Cary!If you happened to stop by my blog, i...Thanks, Cary!<BR/>If you happened to stop by my blog, it talks about all but my professional life...(not yet at least :)<BR/>I am an Oracle (pl/sql, apex) Developer among other things...<BR/><BR/>Anyways, in your opinion - <BR/>What Should I do to get there? <BR/>How do I know what I do not know yet? <BR/>I know I can find answers when I face an issue. But how do I find out if it is the right way?Yet Another Mother Runnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01590619021049889904noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-55485271611804532822008-09-29T08:36:00.000-05:002008-09-29T08:36:00.000-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Yet Another Mother Runnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01590619021049889904noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-23715762286231557332008-09-28T15:22:00.000-05:002008-09-28T15:22:00.000-05:00gnd,I haven't looked recently at a lot of my early...gnd,<BR/><BR/>I haven't looked recently at a lot of my early writing. I hope there's not an over-abundance of cringe-worthy material in there. :-)<BR/><BR/>To answer your question, I think I really started paying attention to the active/passive issue in the later 1990s when I was reviewing a lot of my staff's consulting engagement summaries.<BR/><BR/>It's one of those issues that I had known about for a long time, but I didn't begin to really appreciate the difference it could make until I had to confront it professionally every day.Cary Millsaphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16697498718050285274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-52377947774177456172008-09-28T15:13:00.000-05:002008-09-28T15:13:00.000-05:001. The Palin-Couric interview wreaked of passive v...1. The Palin-Couric interview wreaked of passive voice on Palin's part last week :)<BR/><BR/>2. Where did you start looking to turn your passive voices into active voices (related to your early years in Oracle)??Yet Another Mother Runnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01590619021049889904noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-39843973199160185102008-09-27T10:26:00.000-05:002008-09-27T10:26:00.000-05:00Freekdhooge,Oh, you're right square on target. Def...Freekdhooge,<BR/><BR/>Oh, you're right square on target. Definitely. But in my experience, many people don't want to learn that there's anything about them that needs improving (myself included some days). That's where courage comes in.<BR/><BR/><EM>Learning</EM> is a state transition between not knowing something and knowing it. For someone to truly learn, he has to have the courage to admit—at least to himself—that there's something he doesn't know. Some people are unwilling to do that.<BR/><BR/>Good writing can act as a forcing function to make learning happen for the author. That's an important distinction. A lot of people view writing as "merely" the act of recording what you already know. I view writing—<EM>good</EM> writing, anyway—as much, much more than that. ...For exactly the reason you have identified.Cary Millsaphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16697498718050285274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-40281008677826715872008-09-27T10:00:00.000-05:002008-09-27T10:00:00.000-05:00Pete,Even in the sciences, though, we can use pass...Pete,<BR/><BR/>Even in the sciences, though, we can use passive voice to cover our own gaps. I don't have a good chemistry example off the top of my head, but I do remember an example from my early days at Oracle (early 1990s).<BR/><BR/>I can remember not knowing explicitly which process it was that did the work of row retrieval. With passive voice, it was possible to discuss row retrieval for <EM>years</EM> without actually knowing which process it was that was executing the work. (The rows had simply "been fetched," etc.)<BR/><BR/>It took some Unix work (ps, strace, etc.) before I could really construct confident SVO (subject-verb-object) sentences about which process was doing what. With tools like pstack (see <A HREF="http://blog.tanelpoder.com/2008/06/14/debugger-dangers/" REL="nofollow">Tanel's work</A> for example), you can know even which specific function calls within the server process are doing which units of work.<BR/><BR/>You just can't write SVO sentences without knowing what S is. Passive voice is a tool that people can use (well, abuse) to completely conceal the relationship between S and O without a lot of people even noticing. Often, that relationship is more informative than anything else about the sentence.Cary Millsaphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16697498718050285274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-19371826303599497052008-09-27T09:51:00.000-05:002008-09-27T09:51:00.000-05:00Cary,"then I think you have only four choices. (1)...Cary,<BR/><BR/><I>"then I think you have only four choices. (1) You can decide not to write anymore because it's too hard; (2) You can try to conceal your deficiencies with weasel wording; (3) You can admit the gaps in your work; or (4) You can improve the quality of your own knowledge."</I><BR/><BR/>Is it not required to admit the gaps in your work, before you can improve your knowledge? How else would you know what you must improve?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2954359812249072053.post-44436922323875069382008-09-27T03:49:00.000-05:002008-09-27T03:49:00.000-05:00In defence of the passive.I am often too passive i...In defence of the passive.<BR/>I am often too passive in my writing, but I blame that on my education - being a chemistry graduate and one-time research scientist I was trained to write about the events and the observations and not about the observer. However, observation and reporting of fact <BR/>(but not necessarily postulating reasons) are passive acts and not at all the same as responsibility and leadership that <I>should</I> be exhibited by politicians where the non-passive does, as you say, indicate couragePete Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17524162121927585565noreply@blogger.com