Evil passive voice

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed May 2 21:23:47 UTC 2007


At 7:25 AM -0700 4/29/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>  >From http://www.editorialservice.com/11ways.html :
>
>"A sentence written in passive voice is the shifty desperado who
>tries to win the gunfight by shooting the sheriff in the back,
>stealing his horse, and sneaking out of town."
>
>JL
>
Or even more passive-aggressively, from the new (5/7) New Yorker,
just arrived on my doorstep, p. 87--

"Constructing passive sentences is a way of concealing your own
testicles, lest someone cut them off."

--psychoanalyst Ernesto Morales played by Ian Holm in the new film
"The Treatment"

[I'm not sure whether according to this theory women can construct
passive sentences with impunity.]

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