RE: Active versus passive (WAS Displays versus Appears-Which One? )

[Marguerite Krupp <mkrupp -at- cisco -dot- com>]

Jane S. wrote:

Those  are not examples of passive voice, even though they are examples of
passivity.
What is an example of passive voice in the passage below is:

needs to be unnamed

Any 'to be' verb tense with a past tense verb is an example of passive
voice. It is also tough to eliminate, even ambiguous as to why you really
want to when it is so common in plain speech.

Correct me if I'm wrong
*********************
Actually, that is not quite correct (she said, putting on her English
Professor hat).

You CAN use the past tense of the verb "to be" without also using the
passive voice:
"I was happy," is an example. Some supposed grammar checkers flag all uses
of the verb "to be" as passive, and that's not correct.

What really differentiates the passive voice from the active is the
following:

* In the active voice, the subject is the DOER of the action: "I unplugged
the computer." In the context of this discussion: "The system displays an
error message...." or "An event message appears on the screen."

* In the passive voice, the subject is the RECEIVER of the action: "The
computer was unplugged by me."

(I'm not even going to go near the "passive aggressive voice" suggested by
one poster the last time we had this discussion. Check the archives for that
one.)

When is the passive voice acceptable (specifically, in tech comm)?

* When you want to emphasize the receiver of the action by placing it early
in the sentence: "The power cord musts be unplugged before you open the
chassis." News stories ARE FREQUENTLY WRITTEN this way to grab the
reader's/listener's attention.

* When you don't know who is doing the action, when it doesn't matter who
does the action, or you don't want to assign responsibility to a particular
person, place, or thing (as Mike said): "This procedure assumes that the
router HAS PREVIOUSLY BEEN CONFIGURED to provide the necessary services."

* (Very rarely), for variety in sentence structure, to break up a long
series of similarly structured sentences (for example, after lots of
successive active voice subject/verb/object format sentences).

*************************************
We return you now to your regularly scheduled discussions.

Marguerite

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