(no subject)

[eirias]

Oh Lordy, I just love the Language Log. You thought your junior year English teacher was crotchety? Geoff Pullum does it much, much better. On using the passive voice -- a "sin" which, I note, is unavoidable if you are a modern scientist -- he points out that E. B. White himself, in one corpus of writings, used the passive voice with greater-than-average frequency. Pricelessly, he then explains:

I'll tell you why. Because Strunk and White aim to tell you that you mustn't use passives; it doesn't apply to them. What a shameless, pontificating, ignorant, hypocritical, incompetent, authoritarian pair of old weasels they were.

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

See, now I have to smack him. Nobody better be messin' with my Strunk and White.