Навигация
1. Write in the Active Voice
Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, always choose the active, rather than the passive, voice. With the active voice, the agent (the person or thing carrying out the action expressed by the verb) is the subject:
John opened the door.
There are two types of passive voice constructions. In one, the agent is identified, but the person or thing toward which the action is directed (rather than the agent) is the subject of the sentence:
The door was opened by John.
In the second type of passive voice construction, the agent is not identified at all:
The door was opened.
(Note: The verb "to be" [am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been] often flags the passive voice.)
In addition to being less natural, less direct, and less vigorous, sentences that fail to identify an agent can raise ethical questions, since they fail to attribute responsibility for the action they express. The passive voice can, however, be an effective means of doing at least three things:
a. Focusing attention on the thing acted upon:
The bus was destroyed by a freight train.
b. Describing action when the agent is unknown or unimportant:
The building was demolished over fifteen years ago.
c. Placing the agent at the end of a clause where he, she, or it can more easily be modified by a long modifier:
The house was built by John Hanson, who went on, years later, to become president of the Continental Congress.
Many science and technical writers once considered passive voice more objective than active voice and, hence, more appropriate to their writing. As the quotations below suggest, however, the traditional preference for passive voice in scientific and technical writing is changing:
We cannot object to this use of the passive construction in itself. We can object to its abuse—to use almost to the exclusion of all other constructions. When the passive is used as a rule, not as an exception to obtain a particular effect, writing soon begins to seem forced and uncomfortable.
— John Kirkman, Good Style: Writing for Science and Technology
The active is the natural voice, the one in which people usually speak or write, and its use is less likely to lead to wordiness or ambiguity. The passive of modesty, a device of writers who shun the first-person singular, should be avoided. I discovered is shorter and less likely to be ambiguous than it was discovered. The use of I or we. . .avoids dangling participles, common in sentences written in the third-person passive.
— Council of Biology Editors, CBE Style Manual, 5th ed.
[Passive voice] implies that events take place without any one doing anything. Moves files, desks, and ideas without any assistance from a human being. Makes readers wonder whether they should be doing something or just sitting there waiting for the system to perform. It turns actions into states of being. It's somewhat mystical, but tends to put readers to sleep. . . .
To get more active, say who does what. Assign responsibility to the system or to the program or, if necessary, to the reader. If you have to tell readers to do something, don't pussyfoot around—tell them. (Are you slipping into the passive because you don't dare to order readers around?)
— Jonathan Price, How to Write a Computer Manual
2. Avoid Nominalizations
Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, avoid nominalizations. A nominalization is a noun derived from and communicating the same meaning as a verb or adjective. It is usually more direct, vigorous and natural to express action in verbs and qualities in adjectives.
no: Our expectation was that we would be rewarded for our efforts.
yes: We expected to be rewarded for our efforts.
no: There was a stuffiness about the room.
yes: The room was stuffy.
Nominalizations frequently crop up in noun strings. A noun string, a series of nouns that modify one another, is often concise but ambiguous. If the noun string is short, it can usually be tamed with a few judicious hyphens:
no: The test area probes were delivered last week.
yes: The test-area probes were delivered last week.
Longer noun strings, however, are often confusing, and it is generally best to unstring them by converting nominalizations back to verbs or by adding a few strategic articles and prepositions:
no: Missile guidance center office equipment maintenance is performed weekly.
yes: The office equipment in the missile guidance center is maintained weekly.
Like passive voice, nominalizations can serve some useful purposes:
a. Nominalizations can facilitate smooth transitions between sentences by serving as subjects that refer back to ideas in previous sentences:
Susan refused to accept the five-stroke handicap. Ultimately, this refusal cost her the match.
b. Nominalizations can be effective when you choose to desensitize a statement by converting the more vigorous and direct verb form into the less vigorous and direct noun form. Thus,
He is scheduled to be executed on Monday.
becomes
His execution is scheduled for Monday.
c. Since nouns often name material things, they have a certain status in our culture, where the concrete often seems more real (hence, more credible) than the abstract. Therefore, although nominalizations often result in pompous and convoluted prose, they occasionally can be used to make the abstract seem more concrete and, perhaps, more convincing. Thus,
The colonists would not tolerate being taxed.
becomes
The colonists would not tolerate taxation.
Joseph Williams neatly sums up these first two principles (write in the active voice and avoid nominalizations): "Try to state who's doing what in the subject of your sentence, and try to state what that who is doing in your verb. . . . Get that straight, and the rest of the sentence begins to fall into place" (Style, 1st ed., p. 8)
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