Passive voice will not be used anymore!

:-)

Paul W. Frields wrote:

I have looked over a wide variety of random insertions in some of our docs and see a lot of passive voice being used. Please try to use active voice in docs instead of passive voice wherever possible. The folloiwng is an example of the difference between active and passive voice:

PASSIVE (incorrect): In Fedora 8, a new tool called "FooBar" has been introduced to help users create foobars. ACTIVE (correct): Fedora 8 includes a new tool called "FooBar" that helps users create foobars.

Generally, passive voice includes unnecessary forms of the verb "to be," such as "has been," "is," or "was." Passive voice is unnecessarily difficult for translators in some locales to address.

Here is one way to test for unnecessary passive voice. If the sentence includes a form of the verb "to be," does it:

(A) describe an *attribute* of the sentence's subject, or (B) describe something that happened?

If the answer is (B), the sentence probably uses passive voice and should be reworded.

Today's English composition tip is brought to you by the letter "M" and the number 4. :-)