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Comment by teach | Hacker News Reader

SO much passive voice. Somebody needs to run that article through Hemingway.[0]

That's like running Andrew Wyeth[1] through a Bob Ross app. [0] Writing is art, it doesn't always need to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator or bereft of its voice.

[0] I loved Bob Ross.

[1] I originally had "Picasso" but the styles were too disparate for the point. Still, props to @krapp for the ERB link.

(sigh.)

I can't resist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGN5xaQkFk0

I understand your point, but I strongly disagree. First, you're saying that the author of this piece -- a military general and historian -- used hard-to-read passive voice throughout because of his extreme demonstrated mastery of the art of writing. He truly considered and wrestled with each sentence.

I don't believe that one bit.

Also, I disagree with your assertion that artisans should avoid learning the fundamentals of their craft, or that doing so somehow robs the work of its "voice".

It reminds me of a fourteen-year-old guitarist who doesn't see the need to learn scales or music theory. "I'm not going to be some cookie-cutter musician, man. My music is going to be original and unique!"

This article would be much better if it had gone through an editing phase or two.

>It reminds me of a fourteen-year-old guitarist who doesn't see the need to learn scales or music theory. >music theory

Scales can almost be self-learned and a good chunk of rock musicians don't know anything about music theory, and can't read music. Many excellent musicians and artists are autodidacts.

You still haven't demonstrated that you understand what "passive voice" even is. I think you'll find this article doesn't make particularly frequent use of it.

I enjoyed the article. Maybe the author doesn't care about writing as much as the content of the article? I certainly don't care to edit this post to your aesthetic standards, or even posts on my blog. In fact, most of what I write is awful. But does it make my points any less true?

Why are there so many people who pick up poorly founded superstitions about language and then insist and sneer how right they are? Folk don't go about making hilariously arrogant and and ignorant claims about say, maths, but with language all bets are off. Maybe they think that because they can speak English they are an expert?

There was nothing wrong with the article as regards the "passive voice" and like most people who moan about the passive voice you likely don't understand what it is: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922

Mentioning that hilariously bad app Hemingway makes it worse. Running Hemingway through hemingway is fun - it gets mutilated.

The writing could be improved and made more forceful, but I don't see much passive voice in there. Are you sure that word means what you think it means?

(And the hemingway app is pretty crappy as far as natural language processing goes.)

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