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Comment by pizza | Hacker News Reader

Using the passive voice is a long tradition of almost everyone who's ever made a mistake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_were_made

Often, I wish publicists would say things more tersely.

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Blaming the passive voice is a long tradition of almost everyone who doesn't read Language Log.

You can write weaselly, evasive cop-outs without using the passive, and you can write sentences that use the passive while still putting the blame squarely where it lies.

Oh, but it's much easier with the passive, as the classics of the genre attest. That doesn't mean the passive voice isn't sometimes to be preferred, which is all that the Language Log people are saying.

Well, they're also saying that 1) it's very frequently blamed when it doesn't actually diffuse responsibility ("Mistakes were made by John. He's been sacked."); and 2) it's very frequently blamed where it doesn't even occur. This is not to say that it cannot be used in this way, but simple avoidance or blame of the passive is neither necessary nor sufficient.

"Users may be experiencing issues" is not the passive voice (not that you explicitly said it was, but IMAO you implied it), it's the continuous aspect, modified by whatever an auxiliary like "may" does. (this is where my grammar vocabulary starts to run out. conditional continuous maybe?)

passive would be "Issues may be being experienced by users".

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