[PRL] Bad Writing and Bad Thinking

[John Clements]

On Apr 17, 2010, at 12:06 PM, David Herman wrote:

> Feh.
> 
>     http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003366.html
> 

As a late-comer to this party: this blog post was too vitriolic for me to take it seriously.  Also, it's beating straw men: the author acknowledges that Orwell didn't explicitly rule out the passive, then goes on to lambaste him for using it.

Also, my near-universal experience is that changing a passive-voice construction to an active-voice one makes it (IMNSHO) better. Perhaps I've just been brainwashed.


John

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