The Passive Voice in Writing

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The passive voice in writing, it has its underrated, well underrated in the following sense. You open up any style manual and it one of the first bits of advice is, don't use the passive. If you're already talking about something that is done to then that's the logical way to begin the next sentence. And the passive voice makes that possible - look at a mime in the park being pelted with zukine ah. The two most famous style guides in the english namely orwell's politics in the english language and strunk an whites, the elements of style,. both accidentally use the passive in the very sentence in which they say, don’t use the passive

Steven Pinker has spent an entire academic career thinking deeply about language, cognition, and human nature. Driving it all, he says, is an Enlightenment belief that the world is intelligible, science can progress, and through rational inquiry we can better understand ourselves.

He recently joined Tyler for a conversation not only on the power of reason, but also the economics of irrational verbs, whether violence will continue to decline, behavioral economics, existential threats, the merits of aerobic exercise, photography, group selection, Fermi’s paradox, Noam Chomsky, universal grammar, free will, the Ed Sullivan show, and why people underrate the passive (or so it is thought).

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