July 2006
Passive
or active?
by Tara Gray
The following excerpt
comes from the excellent book by Richard Lauchman "Plain Style: Techniques
for Simple, Concise, and Emphatic Business Writing" (1993:38).
"Don't worry about
"passive" or "active"; just put the right word first. Many people blame
the passive voice for most of the ills in. . . writing. The passive
is frequently necessary, and writers who believe it is "bad" or "weak"
will often emphasize the wrong idea. . . A sentence is active when the
subject acts; a sentence is passive when the subject receives the action"
(Lauchman 1993:38).
Active: I
studied chile peppers.
Passive: Chile peppers were studied.
To ask which of
these sentences is better is to ask the wrong question. The active sentence
emphasizes the researcher; the passive sentence emphasizes chile peppers.
Which do you want to emphasize? To know, ask yourself which you want
to talk about in the sentences that follow. If you are going to talk
about the choices you made as a researcher, the active version is the
appropriate version. If however you are going to talk about chile peppers,
the passive construction is better because it emphasizes chile peppers.
For more ideas like these, read the excellent book by Richard Lauchman
"Plain Style: Techniques for Simple, Concise, and Emphatic Business
Writing" (1993).
Good luck with it:
if you have any questions or comments about writing, please contact
me at tgray@nmsu.edu. I'd love to
hear from you and will answer your questions.
***********************
Relationship
between procrastination and perfectionism
By Dominique T. Chlup
I recently discovered
that I am a terrible procrastinator. Let me rephrase that: I am a wonderful
procrastinator. Procrastination was one skill I never knew I possessed.
When others would talk about their ability to procrastinate, I would
nod politely, but silently think, "Finally, an affliction I do not suffer
from." Alas, I not only have the skill to procrastinate I am very good
at it. This became glaringly apparent to me the other day when I caught
myself gladly getting up from the computer to clean up one of my cat's
hairballs rather than start the book chapter revisions that are due
back at the editors next week.
Read the entire
column here.
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