Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mary Dash's Writing Tips

plainlanguage.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 74 posts

Re: Mary Dash's Writing Tips

#41

Post by naniwaduni »

ellius wrote: post #39
mrob wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice relies on passive voice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." If you specify who's acknowledging it then the joke doesn't work.

This is a great example of where to use the passive voice. Austen reverses the sentence structure to pack the punch at the end. In general, 2 good principles are: 1. Put the punch at the end of a sentence. 2. Put familiar information at the beginning of a sentence and new information toward the end. The passive voice can help you with both of these design goals. Orwell talked about where the passive voice is most dan…

Orwell also had no fucking idea what he was talking about and couldn't identify a passive to make a point about it.

Since you bring up "Politics and the English Language", I'll pull up some "Fear and Loathing of the English Passive":

> This is not a statistical quirk. Orwell’s writing features significantly more passives than typical prose. By one count, on average in typical prose about 13% of the transitive verbs are in the passive, whereas in Orwell’s essay ‘Politics and the English language’ it is 20% (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, p. 720, citing Bryant 1962). My own counts, adhering strictly to the definitions of Huddleston & Pullum et al. (2002), are somewhat higher (probably because I include passive participles used as modifiers rather than complements, which for some reason many grammarians miss), but the ratio is unchanged: by my count, about 17% of the transitive verbs in random prose are likely to be passive, while a careful count of the whole of Orwell’s essay shows that 26% are passive. By either count, then, Orwell uses more than one and a half times as many passives as typical writers.

Re: Mary Dash's Writing Tips

#42

Post by ellius »

naniwaduni wrote: post #41
ellius wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great example of where to use the passive voice. Austen reverses the sentence structure to pack the punch at the end. In general, 2 good principles are: 1. Put the punch at the end of a sentence. 2. Put familiar information at the beginning of a sentence and new information toward the end. The passive voice can help you with both of these design goals. Orwell talked about where the passive voice is most dan…

Orwell also had no fucking idea what he was talking about and couldn't identify a passive to make a point about it. Since you bring up "Politics and the English Language", I'll pull up some "Fear and Loathing of the English Passive": > This is not a statistical quirk. Orwell’s writing features significantly more passives than typical prose. By one count, on average in typical prose about 13% of the transitive verbs a…

He also freely admits at the end of the essay that he's sure he committed many of the sins he's preaching against. I suspect he'd also freely admit that there are reasons to use the passive voice. But I think his primary complaints, especially his egregious examples of academic and political writing, were right on the money.

Re: Mary Dash's Writing Tips

#43

Post by smogcutter »

cranekam wrote: post #36
dan-robertson wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re writing for a very wide audience, many of whom may not have good literacy, then avoiding anything slightly complicated matters a lot. There are all sorts of words one often sees in documents from governments (and this article is from and for the us government) that are not suitable for wide audiences. For example: - shall - one as a pronoun - whom (instead of “incorrectly” writing who) - sentences with lots…

Definitely agree here. In addition, I am reasonably literate and understand all the uncommon words people use instead of everyday ones but I find reading windy prose is tiring . "I purchased a house", "we utilized the spoon", "Steve and myself are going to the pub" all sound a lot more clumsy and showoff-y than "I bought a house", "we used the spoon", "Steve and I are going to the pub".

For what it’s worth, “Steve and myself are going to the pub” is flatly incorrect. Good rule of thumb is that if it you rewrite the sentence with just the pronoun and it sounds wrong, it’s wrong. “Myself is going to the pub” and throwing poor Steve in there doesn’t change that.

Re: Mary Dash's Writing Tips

#44

Post by Veen »

naniwaduni wrote: post #40
puzzledobserver wrote: post #18

I concede that people have a tendency to overuse the passive voice, perhaps to appear less assertive, but... I find this injunction against the passive voice simplistic. The active and passive versions of a sentence _mean_ different things, and one cannot blindly substitute one for the other. Compare: 1. There was a cat in the house. She had not been fed by her owner that morning. She meowed loudly at the passing pos…

see also passive loathing: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf

Pullum made an excellent series of videos based on this paper.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNRhI4Cc_QmsihIjUtqro...

It’s also worth pointing out that the Mary Dash link makes the error that many “authorities” on writing make by using this as an example of why passives are bad:

> My car was driven to work by me.

In fact, as Pullum explains, this is simply ungrammatical. No native speaker would ever say it because there is an information structuring constraint on passive clauses that makes this sentence ungrammatical.

Re: Mary Dash's Writing Tips

#45

Post by btilly »

Judging by this sample, Mary Dash should be receiving writing tips, not giving them.

Do you doubt me? Consider the opening paragraph:

Readers prefer active voice sentences, and we should try to use the active voice in most of our business writing to communicate our message most effectively. Active voice clearly identifies the action and who is performing that action. Unfortunately, much of government writing is in the passive voice, giving documents a wordy, bureaucratic tone. Over time, writing in the passive voice simply becomes a habit, one we should all work to change.

Here is a quick redraft:

We should use the active voice in most of our business writing. Readers prefer it, and will better understand our message. This style clearly identifies what the action is, and who is doing it. Unfortunately most government writing is in the passive voice. This gives documents a wordy, bureaucratic tone. We need to break that habit.

The message has not changed, but readability improved a lot. Use https://app.readable.com/text/ to test that. The required reading level went from grade 10 to advanced grade 5, and other measures of readability also improved.

This is a big difference. https://www.wyliecomm.com/2019/03/us-literacy-rate/ reports on a broad survey of adult literacy rates. Only 2% of US adults read and write at a grade 11 or better level. By contrast 48% read and write at a grade 6 or better level. My redraft is readable by an order of magnitude more people.

What did I change?

1. Break up complex sentences.

2. Shorter is better.

This isn't hard. But it really makes a difference.

Re: Mary Dash's Writing Tips

#46

Post by potatoyogurt »

mrob wrote: post #23
puzzledobserver wrote: post #18

I concede that people have a tendency to overuse the passive voice, perhaps to appear less assertive, but... I find this injunction against the passive voice simplistic. The active and passive versions of a sentence _mean_ different things, and one cannot blindly substitute one for the other. Compare: 1. There was a cat in the house. She had not been fed by her owner that morning. She meowed loudly at the passing pos…

The famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice relies on passive voice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." If you specify who's acknowledging it then the joke doesn't work.

While I agree with the general point that basic and direct sentence structure is not always the right choice, there is no passive voice in the sentence you quoted.

"it is a truth universally acknowledged" -> impersonal construction

"a single man... must be in want of a wife" -> this is active voice, man is still the subject of the sentence and be is the the only verb. "Want" is a noun. See https://www.dictionary.com/browse/want, definition 14.

Re: Mary Dash's Writing Tips

#47

Post by briefcomment »

btilly wrote: post #45

Judging by this sample, Mary Dash should be receiving writing tips, not giving them. Do you doubt me? Consider the opening paragraph: Readers prefer active voice sentences, and we should try to use the active voice in most of our business writing to communicate our message most effectively. Active voice clearly identifies the action and who is performing that action. Unfortunately, much of government writing is in th…

This is very effective in my experience.

This kind of simplicity always gets praise in work environments, without explicitly being identified as "simplicity".

Your rewrite was particularly skilled. Sometimes, it's hard to see that some things aren't adding value.

Another tip:

-In Emails, liberally use new paragraphs. Sometimes, even one sentence paragraphs are ok.

I think this is because any way of compartmentalizing writing in non-trivial ways improves comprehension. It gives cues on how to digest the ideas in the writing.

Re: Mary Dash's Writing Tips

#48

Post by naniwaduni »

ellius wrote: post #42
naniwaduni wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orwell also had no fucking idea what he was talking about and couldn't identify a passive to make a point about it. Since you bring up "Politics and the English Language", I'll pull up some "Fear and Loathing of the English Passive": > This is not a statistical quirk. Orwell’s writing features significantly more passives than typical prose. By one count, on average in typical prose about 13% of the transitive verbs a…

He also freely admits at the end of the essay that he's sure he committed many of the sins he's preaching against. I suspect he'd also freely admit that there are reasons to use the passive voice. But I think his primary complaints, especially his egregious examples of academic and political writing, were right on the money.

The trouble is not that he incidentally commits them. He simply has no idea what they are.

Re: Mary Dash's Writing Tips

#49

Post by thaumasiotes »

mrob wrote: post #23
puzzledobserver wrote: post #18

I concede that people have a tendency to overuse the passive voice, perhaps to appear less assertive, but... I find this injunction against the passive voice simplistic. The active and passive versions of a sentence _mean_ different things, and one cannot blindly substitute one for the other. Compare: 1. There was a cat in the house. She had not been fed by her owner that morning. She meowed loudly at the passing pos…

The famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice relies on passive voice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." If you specify who's acknowledging it then the joke doesn't work.

> If you specify who's acknowledging it then the joke doesn't work.

Not quite, the original is very explicit about who acknowledges the truth in question.

What do you think is the difference between "it is a truth universally acknowledged" and "it is a truth acknowledged by all"?

Re: Mary Dash's Writing Tips

#50

Post by thaumasiotes »

potatoyogurt wrote: post #46
mrob wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice relies on passive voice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." If you specify who's acknowledging it then the joke doesn't work.

While I agree with the general point that basic and direct sentence structure is not always the right choice, there is no passive voice in the sentence you quoted. "it is a truth universally acknowledged" -> impersonal construction "a single man... must be in want of a wife" -> this is active voice, man is still the subject of the sentence and be is the the only verb. "Want" is a noun. See https://www.dictionary.com/…

> there is no passive voice in the sentence you quoted

There is no finite passive verb, but "acknowledged" is a passive form in the sentence in question. It's just a participle rather than a finite verb.

Post reply on HN