Re: Pet Peeves

["Fred Ridder" <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Two words: passive voice

I freedly admit that in the example you cite, it doesn't make
much difference. Heck, it may even be more appropriate in
this case because I know a lot of users who wouldn't
*dream* of using RegEdit on their own (they'd insist on
leaving that to a service tech) so that it's better to leave
the doer vague. De-emphasizing who/what performs an
action is one of the legitimate reasons for using the passive
voice despite the often deepley ingrained rules against its
use.

But in the more general case, it really is good practice to
use the active voice unless there is a specific, justifiable
reason for using passive voice. And I'm not sure that
avoiding gender and number issues in pronouns is a good
enough reason by itself.

-Fred Ridder


>From: "Suzette Leeming" <suzette -dot- leeming -at- gmail -dot- com>
>To: "Brierley, Sean" <Sean -dot- Brierley -at- ipc -dot- com>
>CC: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
>Subject: Re: Pet Peeves
>Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:24:20 -0400
>
>What's wrong with avoiding pronouns/gender issues by rewording it to
>something like this:
>
>"Any problems with the setting can be fixed using RegEdit."
>
>Suzette Leeming
>Stouffville, Ontario
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