and about the passive voice, and "gendered" writing styles

[ritaxis]

Two of the annoying things that keep popping up about writing are (1) an irrational hatred of the passive vocie coupled with a complete ignorance as to what the passive voice actually is: and (2) blather about gender and writing style.  They've come together in a recent<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062903997_pf.html"> idiotic essay by Kathleen Parker</a> about President Obama, and you can read the takedown <a href="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2427">here</a> at Language Log as usual.

You are all reading Language Log, right?

You better be!

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I have no idea where the idea that using passive verbs is a female trait came from. If anything, I would associate the passive with at least two male domains, namely science (all lab reports were written this way when I studied science) and officialese. We used it all the time in the Civil Service because you weren't speaking for yourself, you were writing in an official capacity and it wasn't appropriate to name individuals, hence the whole thing shifted to the passive. For example: The documents were passed to the Secretary of State for signature. The name of the person actually taking them there was irrelevant.