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In defense of Strunk and White: Beware—the passive voice can kill
April 16, 2009 | 9:50 am
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By David Rothman
Karen Holt, former deputy editor of Publishers Weekly, is right in her comments to the TeleBlog. Like her, I’m a big cheerleader for The Elements of Style.
I read the half-facetious Chronicle article that Paul mentioned, and admittedly I found some convincing arguments there about certain usages. No one knows it all. What’s more, here at the TeleBlog, all kinds of barbarities slip through on deadline. Besides, language is changing. Perhaps someday I’ll even go along with “ebook” rather than “e-book.” At the TeleBlog, we continue to work on that issue, with Paul dropping the hyphen. Hah! Strunk and White might well agree with me; so I’d like to think. This-here rule thing is tricky.
S&W as a lifesaver
That said, Elements has done far more good than harm even if part of it is wrong or just plain stodgy. I live across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., where, all too often, politicians and bureaucrats use the passive voice to pass the buck. Granted, the passive has its place. But what if you use it constantly to separate yourself from, say, the waterboarding outrages and worse? S&W might actually have saved a few lives by reducing the use of torture, compared to what would have happened otherwise. Isn’t there a difference between, “He was waterboarded,” and, “I waterboarded him”?
Elements potentially could be at least as useful as the Constitution in holding the sinners accountable. I hope President Obama will encourage ‘crats and military officers to consult Elements regularly, with special attention paid to active vs. passive. Many of the better Power People—in the private sector, too, not just government—already know and approve of Elements, a favorite at many elite institutions. I shudder to think where we’d be without it.
All of the above, needless to say, applies to the financial crisis. Perhaps AIG could have stayed out of trouble if its people had rigorously followed the better rules in S&W.
Barbarity of the moment: I caught and changed “tense” to “voice” in the headline. Whew! In Washingtonese, “‘Tense’ was used instead of ‘voice.’”
And another word from Karen: “And let’s not forget the ultimate: ‘Mistakes were made.’”
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Comments:
“S&W might actually have saved a few lives by reducing the use of torture, compared to what would have happened otherwise.”
Perhaps AIG could have stayed out of trouble if its people had rigorously followed the better rules in S&W.
I presume this article is a joke — although you might want to make your irony more explicit in future.
Only partly a joke, alas. We probably don’t know of all the fatalities associated with U.S. torture, or the memos associated with them. Torture does not just happen. It requires people–the “I’s” the subjects. Ultimately, then, in this case, “irony” and “at face value” can blur.
In general, the use of the active voice can make government and the military at least a little more responsible. Language reflects logic. I’m not saying that the active voice is a panacea, but the encouragement of its use can help.
Thanks,
David
“Perhaps someday I’ll even go along with “ebook” rather than “e-book.”
Well since the standard usage in the United Kingdom is “email” and “ebook” those are therefore the proper forms.
After all…they invented the English language.
Uh…didn’t some people in Holland invent the English language?