Passive

A voice beloved of lawyers and scientists, the passive voice saps even the most energetic sentence of its joie de vivre; along the way obscuring responsibility for action and at the same time depersonalising and sterilising whatever meat there may have been. There are circumstances, to be sure, in which one should use the passive (if you can’t identify the author of the action, or if doing so might give offence), but in general a passive sentence is longer, flatter and more tedious to read than its active equivalent.

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