Bits & Pieces

Before I picked up Zinsser's book, I was vaguely aware of my habit of writing in the passive voice rather than the active voice. I had heard the terms before, but they never had any real meaning to me until he demonstrated the difference between the two voices. It's funny though, because I realized then that the reason I write like this may very well have been from growing up with an electro-chemical engineer for a father. Of course, my case was compounded by the fact that his native language is Danish. In addition to that, I grew up reading all the classics novelists--one of whom was Jane Austen. Anyhow, Allen Downy, a Professor of Computer Science at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham Massachusets had some thoughts on the subject, and he details what the style guides from some of the top journals in science had to say on it.

http://allendowney.com/essays/passive.html

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