Orwell was not always right: in defense of the passive voice
Good writing requires subtle interpretation of the rules
By Michael Skapinker
“Never use the passive where you can use the active.” So goes one of George Orwell’s best-known admonitions in his essay “Politics and the English Language”. Many style guides contain the same instruction.
“The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive,” says Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, a key text for US journalists.
The style guides say the active voice is braver and more honest. It accepts responsibility. Writers, chief executives and government ministers who use the active voice say: “I made mistakes.” They do not wriggle away with the passive “mistakes were made”.
But some experts reject Orwell’s advice. Watch the six-part video series by Geoffrey Pullum, a linguistics professor at Edinburgh university. (You can also read his article “Fear and Loathing of the English Passive”.)
Prof Pullum starts off gently, but by the time he gets to Strunk and White he is furious. This apparently mild academic calls The Elements of Style “the book that I hate the most”.
For a start, he says, its authors do not know what the passive voice is. They…
