It's About Learning

It has been observed in a frequency all too significant that students upon submission of their written assignments have been inclined to have chosen a manner of composition that is too often far from one that is direct enough to be understood as conveying meaning in a fashion that is most expedient.

HUH??? I would be shocked if this wasn’t your initial response to this sentence. Chances are you had to read the sentence several times to discern:

Student’s writing is difficult to understand when they use passive voice.

Obviously the first sentence is a ridiculous exaggeration I created to make a point about passive voice and vague writing. If you have to stop and re-read sentences or paragraphs multiple times to get to their real meaning you are not alone. Too many writers use obtuse or vague writing and I provid recommendations for avoiding this type of writing in the post Our work doesn’t have to be obtuse to be important. The focus of this post is editing our writing from the passive to active voice.

Identifying Passive Voice

Rather then try to explain that passive voices occurs when a noun being acted upon is made the subject of the sentence I will use the following example:

Passive voice
The technology was Implemented

The technology is receiving the action but because it is the subject of the sentence it makes the sentence passive.

Active voice
Teachers implemented the technology.

Teachers are performing the action of implementing the technology which makes the sentence active.

There is an easier way to test to see if your sentence is passive or active. Just use Rebecca Johnson’s “by Zombies” test. If you can add “by Zombies” after the verb and it makes sense (grammatically), you probably have passive voice.

“by Zombies: Test
Consider our two earlier examples:

The technology was Implemented “by Zombies”. – makes sense so it is passive

Teachers implemented the technology “by Zombies”. – doesn’t make sense so it is active.

Warning – the Zombie test works for many examples but it doesn’t work for all. For more examples of sentences written in passive and active voice refer to:

Examples of Active and Passive Voice
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-active-and-passive-voice.html

For a more sophisticated assortment of examples of fixes for passive voice refer to:

7 Examples of Passive Voice (And How To Fix Them)
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/7-examples-of-passive-voice/

Source: Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes: Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat

In Why Academics Stink at Writing Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University and chair of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary points to Watterson’s Calvin to provide a summary for why academics stink at writing:

“…the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!”

In addition to this wonderful humour Pinker offers the following explanations for why so many academics write so poorly:

Metadiscourse — Verbiage about verbiage or the unnecessary attempt to guide your read through your writing.
Professional narcissism — The unnecessary description of their federation rather than what the audience wants to know.
Apologizing — The over explanation of ideas that are difficult, complicated and controversial.
Shudder quotes — Many academics have a nose-holding disdain for idiomatic English.
Hedging — Academics often fear criticisms and cushion their prose with wads of fluff to give them a way out from making a firm commitment to an idea.
Metaconcepts and nominalizations — Because academics spend so much time thinking about issues and ideas they write at that abstract level. This also contributes to their tendency use Zombie Nouns. They do this by turning a verb into a:

“lifeless noun by adding a suffix like –ance, –ment, or –ation. Instead of affirming an idea, you effect its affirmation; rather than postponing something, you implement a postponement.”

Pinker expands on all these ideas throughout his long article but his final reason for shoddy academic writing is:

“There are few incentives for writing well.”

Since few graduate programs teach writing, few academic journals stipulate clarity as a submission criteria and few reviewers and editor enforce it there is little professional motivation to engage in self improvement.

That is until now…

In this blog post The sophistication of truth Seth Godin argues that these common forms of complexity are the sophistication of fear.

“Long words when short ones will do. Fancy clothes to keep the riffraff out and to give us a costume to hide behind. Most of all, the sneer of, “you don’t understand” or, “you don’t know the people I know…”

“It’s complicated,” we say, even when it isn’t.

We invent these facades because they provide safety. Safety from the unknown, from being questioned, from being called out as a fraud. These facades lead to bad writing, lousy communication and a refuge from the things we fear.”

He encourages us to be fearless and reminds us that our work doesn’t have to be obtuse to be important or brave. I agree with Godin since I have spent that last 20+ years in academia I too have fallen into the traps of

“scientific sophistication, hoping to bamboozle [my] audiences with highfalutin gobbledygook.”

To be fearless Godin suggest that we need to start with:

“This is, “here it is, I made this, I know you can understand it, does it work for you?”

Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to stop writing in the conventional way and simply state what we need to state in the simplest terms. I subscribe to and read Godin’s posts on a daily basis because they are short, simple and to the point.

Or when it is appropriate we need to stop writing all together and use other forms of communication. The following video is a the best example of this sophistication in simplicity: