Using Active Voice in Writing

ffthegame · 2016-03-03T16:20:36+00:00

Great post. I began law school this year and one of the first lectures given to the class was how to write with active voice.

I respectfully disagree with /u/NightwingTRP. To me TRP is a community where I can go to learn and gain insight. Not all posts will be directly related to sexual strategy. If this post helps a reader's writing skills resulting in an improvement in school, then it is just as much a guide to raise SMV as a guide on how to speak properly.

MentORPHEUS · 2016-03-03T16:46:53+00:00

This is a very important thing to internalize if your goal is to maximize your masculinity and communicative power. Use active voice not only in writing, but in speaking as well. Passive voice is the vehicle of the insecure, unwilling to take a strong position, weasel words, outright liars... you see the pattern.

The simplest and most straightforward use of active voice begins with the removal, or at least the purposeful use, of being verbs. Quite simply, one can define a being verb as any variation on the verb “to be.”

This has a name, it is called E-Prime, meaning "English minus the verb 'to be.'" Learning to think and speak (when appropriate) in E-prime is a cognitive tool that helps prevent attribution errors that are one barrier to understanding people's motivations and behaviors.

2016-03-03T16:53:58+00:00

Great post for those in business too. I sometimes run into terrible passive sentences that don't even name the subject sometimes. For example, in many cases there are two or three parties at play, so when I read sentences like, "revenue was restated" I am left wondering, "by who?". I waste time going back to the author to not only ask "who?" but also ask the author to write it in an active voice. I advise my direct reports to use active voice in their emails and presentations to avoid confusion.

The goal isn't to be an expert in college level English for business writing, but this is a big theme in sentence construction that your boss or peers could notice.

Clint_Redwood · 2016-03-03T18:11:56+00:00

These verbs and phrases invoke passive voice by distancing the subject from the action in the sentence.

Side note. When reading people and determining if they are lying, They will often do this exact thing. People will distance themselves with vocabulary to anything seen as a negative. If they commit a crime or are being questioned they will use excessive words and displacement to distance themselves from said accusation. Where as someone at no fault will be very direct and straight to the point.

TheRedStoic · 2016-03-03T18:34:52+00:00

An additional few tips for those who wish to write/speak for masses. (note, improving writing and grammar improves speaking as well).

simplicity is great. Know your topic well enough to explain it to a five year old.
show don't tell.
Read as much if not more than you write. (higher quality content than your own preferably in your own desired reached cohort).
Read backwards to edit.
never go straight to release, sit on everything you write until you're not in that mode anymore before editing.
If using English, there's almost necessarily a better singular word to use than an adverb modifying a verb, or an adjective modifier. (very bad = abysmal, too dumb = idiotic, too big = humongous, etc)
be precise and concise. Modern attention spans can't wait long to get to the point.

And my personal peeve, know the difference between vagueness and ambiguity.

2016-03-03T19:47:57+00:00

Interesting, I never really thought of it in those terms, but did it anyway when I would look at a sentence and think "this is kinda exhausting to look at, i'll shorten it somehow"

draylath · 2016-03-03T20:48:24+00:00

Thanks for this excellent post.

Although I'm a secondary school teacher I often find myself slipping in areas of grammar such as this. Also I'm a new blogger and should really tidy up my use of written English.

Cashman124 · 2016-03-03T22:59:48+00:00

Thanks for the advice. Maybe I should of attended more writing writing classes in college to get a better sense of writing. I even look back at some of my comments and think how repetitive using these passive words.

Entropy-7 · 2016-03-03T23:49:21+00:00

The general rule is to always use the active voice. Only use the passive voice if - for whatever reason - the object is more important than the subject with respect to your narrative.

As a tongue-in-cheek example, compare: 1) John fucked Mary. 2) Mary was fucked by John.

If Mary, rather than John, is the focus then #2 is more appropriate despite being written in the passive voice.

2016-03-03T20:00:04+00:00

I use the active voice all of the time so that when I need to use the passive, it is effective. Like, "unfortunately, the letter was not sent." Who did not send it? Who knows? And nothing is admitted.

ShavedApel · 2016-03-04T03:32:41+00:00

Active voice is actually recommended for scientific technical writing also.

Source: Barry J. Rosenberg

Fuck_shadow_bans · 2016-03-04T15:57:48+00:00

Active voice tends to garner better results in any sort of non-scientific, persuasive writing

It works better in scientific writing too. The reason people use passive in peer-reviewed lit is that it does "sound smarter". But if you use active voice, you are forced to actually BE smarter and/or write a better paper.

NightwingTRP · 2016-03-03T14:43:30+00:00

TRP is about communicating ideas... not quality prose. That's why I have not written such a guide already.

Also, style and skill in writing will actively work against you in some fields. e.g. academia. Many journals are full of people who can't write prose to save their life. Hell! Even the places where quality prose is meant to be valued (publishing) don't value it. You'll find markedly different quality in the prose of the bestsellers over the past 5 years. Look at journalism for another example.

2016-03-03T18:19:31+00:00

Well, that was vapid. Nice to see that you've decided to let the rules of language be your master, I guess.

Title	Using Active Voice in Writing
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	178
Comments	31
Date	March 3, 2016 2:18 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/48s5fq/using_active_voice_in_writing/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/using-active-voice-in-writing.56693 https://theredarchive.com/post/56693

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