Re: active vs. passive

[Usha Manoj <usha -dot- manoj07 -at- gmail -dot- com>]

The problem really occurs when you cannot just identify the subject or
adding a subject and converting to active makes the sentence too
complicated.

On 08-Aug-2017 11:02 AM, "Lauren" <lauren -at- writeco -dot- net> wrote:

> I was taught in a technical writing course many years ago to avoid "to be"
> in technical writing. Now that I avoid it, I cringe when I see it. "To be"
> is promissory, predictive, and passive. It is not "passive voice" it
> passive or a passive sense, like timid. "To be" is not in the moment and it
> asks the reader to wait for some future event or to reflect on some other
> option. Technical writing should address the matter at hand, so for that,
> "to be" should be avoided. Proposal writing should be assertive and "to be"
> is timid.
>
> For the example here, "the directory will be created," I would say the
> "the system will create the directory," to avoid a passive sense that is
> not necessarily a passive voice.
>
>
> On 8/7/2017 3:11 PM, Robert Lauriston wrote:
>
>> Future tense is sometimes appropriate. "If the specified output
>> directory does not exist, it will be created automatically."
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 2:58 PM, Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> It is usually good to avoid future tense when documenting the
>>> capabilities
>>> of a product. ...
>>>
>>
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