From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: emacs documentation: what's active voice, passive voice? Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 18:48:46 +0000 (UTC) Organization: muc.de e.V. Message-ID: References: <4ca8659e$0$50453$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <322eca01-3bf5-4078-9439-57ba9503afc6@k1g2000prl.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1291871119 15870 80.91.229.12 (9 Dec 2010 05:05:19 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 05:05:19 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Dec 09 06:05:15 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PQYgp-0007HM-4H for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 09 Dec 2010 06:05:11 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:33627 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PQYgo-00054w-Dr for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:05:10 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!news.glorb.com!news2.glorb.com!feeder.erje.net!news.internetdienste.de!newsfeed.velia.net!news.tu-darmstadt.de!news.muc.de!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs Original-Lines: 19 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: marvin.muc.de Original-X-Trace: colin2.muc.de 1286218126 14200 2001:608:1000::2 (4 Oct 2010 18:48:46 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: news-admin@muc.de Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 18:48:46 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: tin/1.6.2-20030910 ("Pabbay") (UNIX) (FreeBSD/4.11-RELEASE (i386)) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu comp.lang.lisp:293124 gnu.emacs.help:181632 comp.emacs:100551 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:76706 Archived-At: > For technical writing, I favor active voice where appropriate, but in > some cases I think passive voice is preferable. Consider, for example, > "The parameters were perturbed, and the test was run again." I could > rewrite that in active voice as "We varied the parameters and ran the > test again." But what if there is no "we", only "I"? Then I would have > to write "I varied the parameters and ran the test again." That just > doesn't strike me as good style for a technical paper. The point is not > who did it but that it was done. What difference would it make if a > monkey did it, as long as he did it right? Maybe the parameters might be less perturbed at being varied by a monkey than by your good self. Who knows? > Russ P. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). ;-)