[WikiEN-l] (Active Voice) Where went the man?

[Jay Litwyn]

Where did that donkey kick a man?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/politics_and_the_english_language Politics and 
the English language] is an essay where George Orwell takes issue with how 
little people know about what Democracy is. An essay says that wikipedia is 
not a democracy. The rest of us want it to resemble whatever we hav come to 
understand that Democracy is.

"If language can corrupt thought, then thought can also corrupt language."

At the end of the essay, he stated six rules for clear writing. Number four 
says write in the active voice. It is easy to forget that rule, and once a 
sentence is passive, someone might recognize it without knowing how to 
activate it. The vast majority of sentences containing "by" are passive. 
i.e. "The man was kicked by the donkey.". Another way to write it is "The 
will of the donkey caused the man to be kicked". That breaks rule number 
three.

Forms of "to be" are other flag-words for passive voice. If a sentence 
introduces object before subject, then it is passive. In an active sentence, 
you can read cause and effect. In a passive sentence, things are more 
existential; things just happen, or they just are. "The man was kicked into 
the barn." is a passive construction. "Someone or something kicked the man" 
is active, even though it uses inspecific pronouns. Sometimes, finding the 
right pronouns is all you need for activating a sentence.

A donkey kicked a man into the barn.
_______
Spammerz suk Uranus tiL they're fuL uv politiks.