Passive Voice Day

It is reported at the Language Log that today, 27 April, has been declared The Day of the Passive Voice by Shaun’s blog, an idea considered by your humble blogging hedgehog to be finely wrought. Readers and the general public are encouraged to celebrate the versatility and creative potential of the passive voice by incorporating it into their writings on this day, especially given the way in which it is so frequently denigrated, falsely and ignorantly, by people who have been told that if it is excluded from their work, it will be enlivened and better understood by their readers.

That the passive voice is greatly misunderstood, and often misidentified, by its critics, is exemplified beautifully by the comments to the original article at Shaun’s blog in most of which a tremendous confusion about how the passive voice is constructed and what it is understood to mean can be easily observed by anyone who is not blinded by the deluge of nonsense spouted by self-appointed stylists.

The articles, and the challenge contained within them, and this post, are commended to the interest and ingenuity of such readers as might be inspired by them.