Re[2]: Help with sentence structure

[Iain Harrison <iharrison -at- SCT -dot- CO -dot- UK>]

Victor Chapel writes:
     >>
     Another approach could be:

     ...more may be required if retrieving a high number of records.

     This eliminates the entire is/are problem.  Also "is retrieved" and "are
     retrieved" sound passive to me.
     <<

Well, Victor, I agree with you about it being passive, but that is
because the original is passive.

'... if retrieving a high number ...' means something different
from ''... if many records are retrieved'.

The latter implies that the records have been retrieved, the
former that they are still arriving.

To write the sentence in active voice, we'd need to say who or
what is getting these records, and we don't have that information.

Iain
iharrison -at- sct -dot- co -dot- uk