Re: Active verbs (was: Basic Voice)

[Chris <cud -at- telecable -dot- es>]

A function is a process - when something goes in, something else comes 
out.  In that sense the process does something, just like your toaster 
does.  Now, you could say your toaster *lets* you toast your bread, but 
that puts you in league with Zippy the Pinhead, cowtowing to and 
worshipping your household appliances.  (Don't knock it 'till you try 
it...)  You could also say that you *use* your toaster to toast your 
bread, and this is also true - you might and may use other things to 
toast your bread on other occasions.

But it's no less true to say that once you put the bread in the toaster 
and push the lever down, the *toaster* actually toasts your bread.  The 
toaster doesn't need to be alive to do that.  By your volition you have 
handed your bread over to the toaster and are expecting certain results. 
 Once you'rve done that, I defy you to demonstrate that anything other 
than the toaster is toasting your bread.  (I suppose Superman could do 
it without a toaster - heat vision and all that.)

In other words, when you use your toaster, the toaster toasts your bread.

This actually opens up some interesting considerations about prosthetics 
and their boundaries of effect.  When you have a prosthetic leg, do you 
walk or does the leg walk?  You do, of course.  But that's because 
walking or even standing is far more complicated than anything the 
prosthetic is designed to do.  However, when you lean on the leg, are 
you supporting your weight, or is the prosthetic supporting it?  I say 
the prosthetic is supporting your weight - the issue is in defining the 
limits of the prosthetic effect.  In this case the prosthetic is 
designed to support your weight, and that's what it does.

Now, the marketing dept will say this leg allows you to walk, and 
they're more or less correct to say so.  With this prosthesis you have 
the capacity to overcome a specific obstacle - you can walk.  But more 
strictly, the prosthesis doesn't grant you permission, so you still have 
to be careful about the nuance.  And the prosthesis most certainly 
doesn't allow you to put your weight on it.  It simply supports your 
weight.  (Your insurance policy is what allows you to put your weight on 
the prosthetic.)  So if the marketeers want to get down to that level of 
detail, they had better start talking to the tech writers and engineers 
before they put their prosthetic feet in their mouths.

All this blather actually leads to a decent conclusion.  A full 
understand of the device you're describing leads you to criteria for 
choice of active verb, passive verb, or conditionals such as allow, let, 
might, may, and can.  In other words, technical writing demands a 
technical understanding of the subject.  The job is to remove mystery - 
as you do so the criteria for this type of decision become obvious.  The 
decisions you make determine how much mystery (or clarity and precision) 
you transmit to your readers.