HEYWOOD'S PET PEEVES:

OBFUSCATION  AND CLICHÉS IN WRITING

[BACK]

As you will soon discover, I react venomously to careless communication, and especially when it continues after I take the time to review and offer constructive criticism of your work.  Please enlighten me no further about such remarkable phenomena as the "ingenious rocks", "sedentary rocks", "carnivorous forests", "Himalayan martian climbers", "incestivores", and other such wonders of the world; your predecessors have already cast all the illumination upon these subjects as I care to endure.

Aside from the usual careless spelling and grammar mistakes ("a mistake is an error that should not have happened"), I come down hard on poor citations and stylistic mannerisms that render your message obscure.  Two in particular I consistently find rampant in student writing:  passive voice, and trite phrases.  Years of reading submissions brings me to the sad conclusion that most graduating college students do not even know what these are, or of their impact upon communication.

Do not rely solely on spell-checkers and grammar-checkers to catch all mistakes for you.  They miss up to half of the flaws, catching only the most blatant.  That wonderful machine has no more brains than any other kilogram of copper and plastic; would you allow a toilet float to perform your heart surgery?  Communication is as essential to your social well-being as a heartbeat is to your physical.  A human mind (YOURS) must maintain oversight.  YOU should proofread all writing!

Passive voice is a valid grammatical construct.  The problem is that most writers, especially in the sciences and in government, use it far to excess.  Allow me to illustrate what it is, and what is the alternative.

• Passive Voice:  when [something] is done by [someone]

• Active Voice:  when [someone] did [something]

PASSIVE:  In what might be called a revolt, grades earned by angered students were taken to the tired ombudsman.  A plan of equitable settlement was conceived such that the ill-considered criteria would get altered and the old scores revised, based on standards that were agreed upon to be contracted with a syllabus clause in which the exact requirements could be specified.  The unexpected result of this being done was that even more protest was raised after new procedures were misunderstood, so that grades were lowered once recalculated and returned.

Can you really tell who is doing [that previous verb is future perfect, not passive voice] what?  Twenty passive verbs in three sentences IS excessive, and I argue that much of the meaning failed to transfer.  Try it again:

ACTIVE:  In a revolt, angry students took the grades that they received to the ombudsman.  Despite fatigue, that official conceived a plan to equitably alter the dissatisfying criteria and resultant scores.  The teacher would specify exact requirements as a contract clause in the syllabus, and revise the grades.  However, no one anticipated that this would reduce grades further, and student protest grew even louder upon reposting.    [BACK]

See?  Twenty-five percent shorter (87 down to 65 words), yet now  you know much more clearly WHO did WHAT, and WHEN.  The active voice also forced the author to eliminate that second run-on sentence.

Passive voice also includes verbs that you use as noun modifiers (e.g., "angered students--WHO angered them?), or the implicit form of passive voice that lacks a "was", "got" or "by" (e.g., "...grades based on..."--WHO did the basing?).  Grammar-checkers usually do not detect either of these forms.  In that abysmal paragraph above, my word processor (set to "formal" grammar) found only six passive verbs and claimed that no sentences were passive.  Stupid machine!

Any time more than 20% of your verbs are passive, you have probably crossed into the realm of unclear communication.  I suspect that two subconscious motivations account for why this happens.  First, the writer is uncertain about the statement's validity, and seeks to avoid making an absolute commitment.  That contradicts the purpose of professional communication.  Make your points in the declarative, and if you are wrong, be wrong boldly.  Do not be an evasive timid weasel.  The other reason for too much passive voice I suspect is the widespread aversion to speaking in first person, perhaps also due to fear of commitment.  John Fraser Hart, a superb writer and former AAG Annals editor, made a valid point when he encouraged people who had done something to say "I did it."  To artificially force statements into the third person ("It was done by me") adds nothing but extra verbiage, with no gain in content communication.               [BACK]

My other stylistic object of ire is the employment of tiresome meaningless phrases, and often extensive strings of them.  With not entirely facetious interpretations, look through (and AVOID) the phony bologna expressions on my Carlinesque list below.  These add nothing to your communication effort!  Incidentally, note the frequency of passive voice in the vacuous nonsense (phrases to avoid) on the left side.

Scholarly Pretensions:  A Cynic’s Guide to Translating Research Lingo

I may very well be that teacher above who will provoke the grade rebellion, but after reading this far you have fair warning as to the criteria I will employ and the deficiencies I will watch for!