A few other similarly annoying phrases:
- "In light of recent events"
- "Due to unforeseen circumstances"
- "It has become necessary"
Am I missing any?
- "In light of recent events"
- "Due to unforeseen circumstances"
- "It has become necessary"
Am I missing any?
A silly one, for example: https://www.armywriter.com/NCOER/bmw.pdf
It also touches on when not to use passive voice. :)
Apologies for possibly being pedantic, but I do think this is necessary to point out. A lot of people seem to think that "passive" refers to statements that are vague about agency, or often something else vaguely along those lines. But active-vs-passive has nothing to do with that!
Now one could say, well, that's just not how people are using the word "passive" these days; but the thing is, I don't think whatever notion people are trying to express via "passive" is a useful one. Sometimes it means "vague about who's responsible", but often it doesn't; I don't think there's a useful notion worth salvaging in there.
Anyway for way more on this you can see Geoff Pullum's article on it[1], or the whole "passives" category[2] on Language Log...
"Look we don't want to go into the specifics of what did or didn't happen and hell we might not even know .... but here's the bad news...".
Why not thank me now?