RE: emacs documentation: what's active voice, passive voice?

[Drew Adams]

> For technical writing, I favor active voice where
> appropriate, but in some cases I think passive voice is
> preferable. Consider, for example, "The parameters were
> perturbed, and the test was run again." I could
> rewrite that in active voice as "We varied the parameters 
> and ran the test again." But what if there is no "we",
> only "I"? Then I would have to write "I varied the
> parameters and ran the test again." That just
> doesn't strike me as good style for a technical paper. The 
> point is not who did it but that it was done. What
> difference would it make if a monkey did it, as long as he
> did it right?

Indeed.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the passive voice and where, when, and
whether to use it.  Some people learn grammar catechism in school, taking away
the idea that banishing the passive voice will offer them a royal road to
writing clearly.

There is no royal road to writing, like Math.  To write better, read more.
Read, re-read, re-re-read, and read better what you've written (and
rewritten...).

This will help wrt the passive voice:
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/passivevoice.html