Rejecting National Passive-Voice Week
At this point in American publishing history, the passive voice has become the editorial equivalent of human papilloma virus: You can get it anywhere and everyone has it, so who cares?
But just like venereal warts, you really don’t want to suffer from the passive voice, because the passive voice is actually a disease, too, an ailment of thought and style.
This is why I must reject the Obama Administration’s proclamation that today officially starts National Passive Voice Week.
The proclamation reads, in part:
It is right and good to declare a National Passive Voice Week, brought forth by popular demand. This decision was deliberated upon by many experts in this administration, and, it should be noted, great care was taken by those men and women to determine what value there is in passive voice for not only those Americans who know how to write and edit, but all Americans who have something to say while it is their wish not to be active in their voice.
If the passive voice symbolizes some kind of democratization of poor style, then give me lingua-fascism now.*
The most galling form of the passive voice is its most popular construction: the use of “it” to start a sentence when no “it” referent exists in the previous sentence. This is now a standard usage in such stylistic touchstones as The New York Times (“It’s time to move beyond such transitory and piecemeal politics,” from “On the Economy, Think Long Term,” March 31, 2013) and The New Yorker (“It may be that the Polynesians. . .were to exhausted to think about making cooking pots,” from “A Fork of One’s Own,” March 18, 2013).
What else could I select as a stylistic touchstone—Tiger Beat? (“It seems like Taylor is ready to get back into acting and we’re SO excited,” from “Taylor Swift to Appear on ‘New Girl,'” April 1, 2013).
So, even when the fiftieth-anniversary edition of The Elements of Style (2009) says that the passive voice is “less direct, less bold, and less concise” (p. 18) no one is listening. That description gets at the real problem with the passive voice, and with Passive Voice Week: both represent the desire to soften, to elide, to pass off.
Think of the opening line that any municipal bureaucrat loves: “It was decided that. . .” See—no real responsibility appears there. “It was decided” presents no “who did what to whom.” This is a form of exculpatory magic, isn’t it? This also is indicative of the reason why lawyers, too, love the passive voice—because it helps them dance just that many more words away from liability.
So what shall we do to celebrate Passive Voice Week?
Write a letter to the editor? “Dear Sirs: It is with great displeasure that I write you about what is your disrespectful coverage of National Passive Voice Week. . .”
File a police report? “There were a great number of editors milling in the park, and at midnight they could be seen disrobing. . .”
Enter a short-story contest? “It was a dark and. . .”
Wait—suddenly I recall something that I was forced to memorize long ago. . .
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another. . .
Son of a bitch! The passive voice is in our rhetorical blood, like a warty virus without a cure, isn’t it? Damn.
Forget it, Jake. It’s National Passive Voice Week.
*I jest. Fascism is bad.
[This dispatch brought to you in honor of le poisson d’avril.]# # #