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Do any of you notice, when typing an email or a blog post or something like that, that you're tending to start so many sentences with a "T", you consciously try to think of non-T words to start your sentences with? Just for some balance and variety. Or is it just me?

Edit: I thought of also mentioning that the #2 letter I have this issue with is "I", but since T is the one that comes up more for me and that I try to avoid first, I left "I" out. Now I see that I should've mentioned it. More of you have this issue with "I" than with "T".

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From:

lindseykuper

To add to what

cos said (which is all true), a passive-voice version of "Henry dumped a big cat in the road" would be "A big cat was dumped in the road", or "A big cat was dumped in the road by Henry".

The passive voice comes up in technical writing pretty often. Here's an example I just saw:

The 'call' form maintains the call stack in the term syntax. A function call is rewritten with this form, and...

The "is rewritten with this form" part is the passive part. To change this sentence to active voice, I'd need to find out whatever caused the rewrite to happen. If that thing was the frobnicator widget, then I'd write:

The 'call' form maintains the call stack in the term syntax: The frobnicator widget rewrites a function call with this form, and...

But I might not want to do that. If the point of this sentence is merely to convey that a rewrite happens, I wouldn't want the reader to get bogged down in the details of what does the rewrite. In that case, I would do well to leave the passive voice in there.

I find that in technical writing, the main problem with the passive voice is that it makes it too easy to write about things happening without actually knowing what caused each thing to happen. So, as a writer, going through the mental exercise of trying to rearrange one's passive-voice sentences to use the active voice can help tighten up one's thinking a little, even if one actually ends up leaving the sentences in the passive voice because they work better that way.