normative
The Passive Voice Is Underrated
The passive voice is unfairly maligned by style manuals; no construction survives in a language for over 1,500 years without serving a purpose, and the passive is the better choice when the topic already in the spotlight is the acted-upon entity, since good style begins a sentence with given information (the topic) and ends with new information (the focus).
normativepending
Speaker
Steven PinkerEvidence Quote
“the two most famous style guides in the English language, namely Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, both accidentally use the passive in the very sentence in which they say “don’t use the passive.””
Created: 6/13/2026, 3:34:01 AM
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