Passive

A voice beloved of lawyers and scientists, the passive saps even the most energetic sentence of its joie de vivre; along the way obscuring responsibility for action, depersonalising and sterilising whatever meat there may have been on the bones of your sentence.

To be sure, at times where one should use the passive (if you can’t identify the author of the action, or if doing so might give offence), but generally a passive sentence is longer, flatter and duller than its active equivalent.

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