I wrote a technical document and upon proofreading it, realized that the use of the passive voice by me could be considered by some to be excessive.

I'm not sure what I was thinking, but when I corrected the voice I cut the document size in half.


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Re: The use of the passive voice
By: poindexter FORTRAN to All on Tue Apr 27 2021 07:14 am

I wrote a technical document and upon proofreading it, realized that the use of the passive voice by me could be considered by some to be excessive.

I'm not sure what I was thinking, but when I corrected the voice I cut the document size in half.

... Assume the relaxation length of photons in the atmosphere is constant

It is funny you bring the subject up. When I was taking English lessons, they told us passive voice sounded more formal and cooler. Then I started mixing myself with authors and realized passive was frowned upon.

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On 27 Apr 2021 at 07:14a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

I wrote a technical document and upon proofreading it, realized that the use of the passive voice by me could be considered by some to be excessive.

I'm not sure what I was thinking, but when I corrected the voice I cut
the document size in half.

wow. Can you give me an example so I understand this better? I'm interested
in how best to do this sort of thing too.

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I wrote a technical document and upon proofreading it, realized that the use of the passive voice by me could be considered by some to be excessive.

I remember having an engineering friend who was quite certain that a certain type of technical document _should_ be written in the passive voice.

I don't mean that in the, "they think that people should use the Oxford
comma, as it is the only true and proper way" sense (though that one is
true); I mean it in the, "there's a style guide somewhere that says this is
how one should write an engineering paper".

So I tend to wonder about that.

But if you're reducing paper size in half while at least keeping the readability at the same level, undoubtedly it's better by _some_ scale.

But maybe it's like ending a sentence in a preposition, which is something to avoid in Latin, and a rule that was never really a rule in English.

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