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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

> Few people use passive voice in conversations.

Where did you get that from? Passive voice is extremely common in conversations.

"He was acquitted of robbery" (passive) is probably more common than "The jury acquitted him of robbery" (active). "I was born in 1973" (passive) is much more common than "My mother gave birth to me in 1973" (active). "The X-Files was cancelled in 2002" (passive) vs. "Fox management cancelled the X-Files in 2002" (active). Even very colloquial phrases like, "The Cubs got wrecked in that series." Etc.

[Edit to expand/clarify examples.]

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Passive voice is one of those things that really irks people for some reason, mostly because their grammar school teacher taught them so. It has a lot of legitimate uses, but the knee-jerk reaction it invokes in people is bizarre.

For instance, there are many cases where one would want to de-emphasize the subject, or cases where the tone should be "passive" in the sense opposite from "aggressive". If you are arguing with someone because you think they are wrong but don't want to put blame, you may want to say "It was wrong to do that" instead of "You were wrong to do that".

Another use of passive voice is for a certain dark style and more mysterious tone. A good example of this is "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times..."

> "It was wrong to do that" instead of "You were wrong to do that"

Technically true, because it's passive. But still, you'd be using "It was wrong to do that" because it becomes impersonal, more than passive.

What's the passive version of "you were wrong to do that"?

The example doesn't really change.

> "The code was broken" instead of "You broke the code" serves the same function.

None of the examples with "It was" are grammatically passive, though.

It's striking to check out section 3 of the Pullum paper ("Fear and Loathing of the English Passive") mentioned upthread by bshimmin. Pullum gives 22 (!) examples of people criticizing texts as being "passive" when they aren't.

Edit: Pullum mentions a purported "passive style" (which, if it really exists, among other things avoids directly mentioning individual human beings' responsibility for things that happen) distinct from the "passive voice", which might be part of what you're referring to here. But "it was..." isn't a passive-voice construction.

I still wouldn't be wrong: few people, not no people.

But, still all those examples seem more like a one-way broadcast/exceptions rather than a conversation or a start to a conversation rather than the body of one.

But maybe I should have said: few exploratory conversations?

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