He's right, of course
The importance of using the active voice cannot be emphasized enough.
Linux chieftain Linus Torvalds was spotted getting a bit worked up over grammar on Sunday night on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. While Torvalds is known for getting ticked off about coding, this time he was lambasting the grammatical rather than the coding syntax of contributors. The problem? Devs' use of the passive voice. …
I suspect about 50% of us came here to make that post. I first came across it from a list of 'fumblerules', I think collected by William Safire circa 1980, that included :
Don't use no double negatives.
Sentences should a verb.
One will never have used the future perfect in one's entire life.
Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read and figure out.
I've told you a thousand times : avoid hyperbole.
(plus quite a bit more not currently coming to mind)
It's a pity English doesn't really have reflexive forms, found in other languages, that substitute for the passive, because:
the Xyzzy driver error handling fixes itself to avoid a NULL pointer dereference
would also deal neatly with the shortage of kernel maintainers.
> the Xyzzy driver error handling fixes itself...Self-modifying code? .....Spoobistle
You might like to realise if you have been paying attention and learning about all of these new fangled and quantum entangling things that El Reg is freely presenting to you daily for both Day and 0Day Trading, the situation for publishing has moved on and into the surreal realms of inhabitable existentialism with *SMARTR AI Technology exercising Global Command Head Quarter Control to entertain and exploit ITs Almighty Alien Advantage, the Resultant Product of its AIMastery and Relevant Field Utilisation of Remote Universal Virtual Language Leverage.
* ..... SMARTR Mentoring Analysis Reporting Titanic Research for Advanced IntelAIgents
How do you know it's imaginary? Just coz you can't see it means nothing. There are lots of unseen things in the Universe. Cat's know more than those inscrutable eyes let on. Cats might be guardians*** and doG (sic) knows where I'd be now if I didn't let mine live here.
*** Guardians of what though: The keeper of the can opener?
A pointer that points to itself?
As an English teacher with some experience in several non-eurocentric languages, for years I have searched for a word that refers to itself.
I've never found one.
An appropriate label or technical term for a self-pointing pointer may to be in the same category as technical terms or labels such as 'Easter Bunny' and 'Tooth Fairy'.
Mom noted that when I point my index finger at someone else, I am the 'Pointer', and that then I have three more fingers in my palm that are pointing at me.
Fortunately, perhaps, absolutely none of the words are that to which they refer.
Point taken.
"I have searched for a word that refers to itself."
In a logic text book I once read the word is "homologous". "Heterologous" denotes a word that does not refer to itself. Clearly, there are no other possibilities.
"Short" is a short word, and so is homologous; "long" is not a long word and so is heterologous. But what about "Heterologous" itself? If "heterologous" is heterologous then it does not refer to itself and so must be homologous. But if it is homologous then it does refer to itself and so is heterologous.
> As an English teacher with some experience in several non-eurocentric languages, for years I have searched for a word that refers to itself.
> I've never found one.
How ironic then that you use one in your comment - English. (Or was that deliberate?) ;-)
There aren't a huge number of autological words, but they're by no means rare. E.g. polysyllabic, olde.
all snark aside...
I think that using 'passive voice' is an attempt by many to "soften" certain declarative language constructs, similar to using a euphemism.
Some people have told me that speaking authoritatively, or "sounding certain", or even being CONFIDENT, "comes across" [their words; translation 'sparks envy'] for many [translation: snowflakes] as somehow 'aggressive', 'angry', or (in MY bombastic opinion) just MASCULINE.
So I expect that along the way, many of our teachers (and others who had influence) subtly ENCOURAGED us to use a "more passive" grammar style to "soften our tone" (read: sound wimpy and unsure, much like 'up talking') to avoid offending [read: scaring] others [read: snowflakes and overgrown babies].
But science, engineering, and computer programming are (more often than not) VERY certain, precise, and declarative things. And saying "This fixes bug X" is concise and precise and certain.
A potential problem with "sounding certain" and being CONFIDENT is whether the speaker actually has a legitimate basis for said "certainty" and CONFIDENCE. So, depending on the speaker, subject and circumstance, "certainty" and CONFIDENCE may well "come across" as unwarranted bombast (is there any other kind?) thus sparking derision rather than envy. Personally, I attach more weight to evidence of thoughtfulness - evidence that the opiner actually has a clue. Precision and concision are good; shouting does not make them better.
So there you have it, folks. Simple ambiguity-killing declarative sentences or imperative phrases – you can't beat 'em. ®
I couldn’t agree more. Such makes even the most complex of novel tasks so much easier for a great many more to clearly not misunderstand and then subsequently serially misinform and disenfranchise future readers and present viewers a’listening to current thoughts one might consider worthy of a wider knowing and absolutely fabulous world wide web sharing.
"'to clearly not misunderstand' is an egregiously split infinitive"
Split infinitives are only a venial sin in English. See Fowler's Modern English Usage (Gowers edition, not Burchfield, which IMO is useless). The real fault is that the adverb should normally come after the verb or adjective it modifies. But there are exceptions: "only" can come almost anywhere in a sentence. In all other cases in English the modifier come before the head item that it modifies: preposition-noun, subject-verb, adjective-noun.
Other languages have different patterns. I believe that Hungarian is strictly postfix.
</grammar nazism>
Stand up for your right to confidently split infinitives!
It is perfectly clear and grammatical English. Pedants only started complaining about it when someone pointed out that it is impossible to split infinitives in Latin, and therefore renders such an English sentence impossible to directly translate into Latin.
English people were doing it since before those Vikings-masquerading-as-Frenchmen invaded from Normandy, bringing their -er, -ir and -re verbs with them.
For a language that can give the world constructs such as abso-fscking-lutely, splitting an infinitive is child's play.
> This is why the pedants among us will refer to, e.g. GNU/Linux.
Surely a true pedant would know- and feel obliged to point out (*)- the fact that, while most distributions *do* rely heavily on GNU tools, they certainly aren't the sole contributor to the userland of Linux distributions. (**) So if someone wants to push the issue, why should it be *just* "GNU/Linux"?
(*) Pedants like myself, who just did so there!
(**) I'd be interested to know if there are any distros that *do* genuinely use nothing but the Linux kernel and GNU-derived/affiliated tools.
When it comes to systemd, they expect me to have a lot of colorful opinions, but no. I don't personally care about systemd, in fact my main computer and laptop use it. Now, I don't get along with some of the developers (referring to the Kay Sievers incident) and I think they are a little carefree when it comes to bugs and compatibility, but I'm not much in the camp of people who hate the idea of systemd either. . ["Linus Torvalds: systemd isn't that bad", desdelinux dot net, 2014]
I'm not sure that the passive versus active voice is going to change how easy change notices are to read. This is a style difference that I don't much object to, but neither do I see it having much benefit to anyone. There are lots of similar style recommendations which I mostly go along with as long as they don't do too much harm.
In the spirit of tiny grammatical details being considered more important than they are, a company for which I worked had a style checker which was particular about the mood of the verb at the beginning of a comment documenting the purpose of a function. I tended to write my descriptions in the indicative mood ("Deletes all the data"). The checker would reject this and require me to phrase it in the imperative mood ("delete all the data"). I don't know why that s was considered so harmful, but it was clear that someone thought so. Some colleagues found the message, which simply demanded the imperative mood, to be confusing. While I did learn the various moods, I'm not sure they're considered necessary education everywhere and so the style check was not only making an issue of something that nobody really should care about but wasting programmers' time in the process.
Was the problem you'd dropped the subject? Imperatives don't need a subject but grammarians get a bit pissy when you imply it in other moods; i.e. if a grammar checker didn't require the imperative, it would have insisted you write the much more verbose "This function deletes all the data." So a pedantic model has only one valid sentence: "Delete all the data".
(Personally, I find your approach more agreeable; you are not giving an instruction to someone but indicating what the function does. The missing subject is obvious, and such a usage is widely attested in source code documentation.)
Passive voice is considered polite in German.
Direct translation from German creates turbid/turgid prose in English.
This is a popular example, but even the literary greats are just as bad in translation:
“Instruction in world history in the so-called high schools is even today in a very sorry condition. Few teachers understand that the study of history can never be to learn historical dates and events by heart and recite them by rote; that what matters is not whether the child knows exactly when this battle or that was fought, when a general was born, or even when a monarch (usually a very insignificant one) came into the crown of his forefathers. No, by the living God, this is very unimportant. To 'learn' history means to seek and find the forces which are the causes leading to those effects which we subsequently perceive as historical events.”
Perhaps. Some of them may have been Swiss or Austrian, though.
The specs were mostly in pseudo-code, the text was usually just to aid understanding of the code.
I'm struggling to recall any examples almost 30 years on but one phrase I really disliked was "this allows the possibility of".
I'm American. Here, grammar became considered unnecessary somewhere around the mid-1960s, during which time I was busy being born. The only time I was taught anything about English grammar was when learning other languages, and seeing their overlap with English. (Which was interesting, but I must admit that I mostly just "picked it up".)
And was educated during the period in which it was considered unnecessary to teach English grammar, as "kids just pick it up"
Colonial but the same applied. I learnt (English) grammar only when I studied French in high school. :)
Unfortunately kids don't just pick it up which renders much of their later written communication illiterate - ranging from unintended ambiguity to utter impenetrablity.
I had to wait until middle age to learn a practical definition of a sentence and then from a non native English speaker - basically that a sentence expresses a single coherent thought or idea. Forget about finite verbs etc ;) By this definition the absence of coherent thought rather precludes the construction of comprehensible sentences.
The passive is maliciously used to conceal the omission of the implicit by whom, by duck shovers and responsibility avoiders or shifters.
I have just been threatened with a permanent ban from Wikipedia for "vandalism". My sin was to correct a small grammatical error by moving a closing parenthesis five words to the right1.
But then, Wikipedians are one of the weirdest cults on the internet and I shouldn't really be surprised.
1 To paraphrase, I changed "Sydney (who had one arm), but could ride a bicycle ..." to "Sydney (who had one arm, but could ride a bicycle) ...". The horror, the horror.
< "The passive is maliciously used to conceal the omission of the implicit by whom, by duck shovers and responsibility avoiders or shifters."
Indeed. Here in the U.S. the passive voice is commonly used by journalists when reporting on people who were shot by police officers. They mention that someone took a bullet during an "officer-involved shooting" or some other weaselly wording. When you see this you can be 99% sure that the shooter was a cop. They don't use passive voice when a civilian criminal is doing the shooting. I remember one from not too long ago that mentioned that a cop and his wife had been shot. The cop was dead, and the wife was in critical condition. From the headline and first paragraph or two, a person would likely assume that they had been shot by a deranged criminal during a home invasion. The truth? It was an attempted murder/suicide by the husband (cop).
For all the people wanting to catch up somewhat painlessly, even entertainingly, with English grammar, I recommend buying a copy of 'A Dictionary of Modern English Usage' by H.W. Fowler. First published in 1926, though mine is a 2nd edition, published 1968. So, correctly named for certain values of 'modern', then, but it has been issued in several new editions since.
Having the book, you can always look up a particular topic, or you can open it at random, and enjoy whatever your eye lights upon.
Here is the 5th entry under passive disturbances, reproduced for your pleasure:
5. The impersonal passive --- it is felt, it is thought, it is believed, etc. --- is a construction dear to those who write official and business letters. It is reasonable enough in statements made at large --- It is believed that a large green car was in the vicinity at the time of the accident. / It is understood that the wanted man is wearing a raincoat and a cloth cap. But when one person is addressing another it often amounts to a pusillanimous shrinking from responsibility. (It is felt that your complaint arises from a misunderstanding. / It is thought that ample provision has been made against this contingency).The person addressed has a right to know who it is that entertains a feeling he may not share or a thought he may consider mistaken, and is justly resentful of the suggestion that it exists in the void. On the other hand, the impersonal passive should have been used in For these reasons the effects of the American recession upon Britain will be both smaller and shorter than were originally feared. Were should be was (i.e. than it was originally feared they would be).
The person addressed has a right to know who it is that entertains a feeling he may not share or a thought he may consider mistaken, and is justly resentful of the suggestion that it exists in the void. On the other hand, the impersonal passive should have been used in For these reasons the effects of the American recession upon Britain will be both smaller and shorter than were originally feared. Were should be was (i.e. than it was originally feared they would be). ..... H.W. Fowler, via Jonathan Richards 1
That may very well indeed have been true of then, but since the times now, and the places and spaces in which one can work with REST and play, they are so fundamentally a'changed, how best should it be written today to truthfully convey the future news that it is certainly unreasonable and quite possibly even treasonous to try proposing and effectively presenting as fact, the salacious fallacious notion that any American recession upon Britain will be both smaller and shorter than is expected and feared whenever it is sure to be greater and longer than was never even imagined before. ...... for is that not where y'all is at, in an active persistent vegetative state of delusional self-denial ?
Whooosh. Dr Fowler was quoting something written in or before 1926; even if he had made up the illustrative sentence, it would only be relevant for its grammatical structure, not for 21st century geopolitics.
Opinions on grammar are highly variable and subjective. I see little difference between "the thing was fixed" or "this fixes the thing" when the words are clearly linked to a commit. If they were separated from the code they changed, then theoretically it would be harder to understand, but they aren't and, if they were, the suggested changes wouldn't work either because "this" wouldn't refer to anything specific and could be a certain commit, a batch of commits as an update, or who knows what else. Unless they were requiring that the messages take the form of "commit 28ac9307 fixes the thing", the form of the sentence makes little difference to me.
See comment by Jonathan Richards 1.
Passive voice leaves open the possibility, however implicit, that the act being described was not carried out by the commit being described. That is, unless one also explicitly states that, a usually painfully cumbersome sentence construction.
This act was done. By whom?
So do many options involving the active voice, though I grant not the example I used.
I fixed the bug in the thing [in a commit two weeks ago].
These changes [but not this one] fix the bug in the thing.
I contend that this is not really a concern that has much relevance. If people are putting in commit messages that do not correspond to what the commit actually does, how they phrase it is not the problem. Anyone doing this is either deliberately dishonest or getting commits confused, and neither is going to be fixed by adding a subject picked from a short list to the sentence. I also wonder where my most typical form would fall. I tend to write commit messages in the active voice but without a subject ("fixes a bug in the thing"). Yes, those are fragments. It hasn't caused a problem so far and sticking "this" on the front won't help.
The most prominent difference between Torvalds' two example sentences – (1) 'In this pull request, the Xyzzy driver error handling was fixed to avoid a NULL pointer dereference' vs. (2) 'This fixes a NULL pointer dereference in ..' – is not that between passive and active, but that of the subject, actually a question of meaning. In (1), the acting subject implicitly is an unnamed person, a someone who did the fixing, in (2) it is the pull request with its code that does the fixing. Simply transforming (1) into active voice would make it something like 'In this pull request, we fixed the Xyzzy driver error handling to avoid a NULL pointer dereference' – which wouldn't be that much better than the original, either ;-)
Also the most significant bit of the description - that it applies to the Xyzzy driver comes first in the version he doesn't like. A reader skimming a lot of pull requests would want that to come before the detail so as to know whether to continue reading or skip to the next article.
> Also the most significant bit of the description - that it applies to the Xyzzy driver comes first in the version he doesn't like. A reader skimming a lot of pull requests would want that to come before the detail so as to know whether to continue reading or skip to the next article.
A bit like traffic reports on the radio where they say "There's a five mile queue on the <roadname>" but, because you're only half-listening, it's the mention of the road's name that gets your attention but by then it's too late.
Alone worth the price of admission if there were any such impost. ;)
Linus is Finnish? No?
I vaguely recall Finland is/was pretty keen on Latin including web sites entirely in Latin which might explain a few things.
Genius idea icon ====>
How's about someone develop an English-like programming language◈ for writing them commit messages? You'll have a standard library of messages and plug in the parameters. (That way there won't be any arguments). So you'll write your comment in whichever dialect you like, hit compile, and it translates that into good English.
◈ In fact, it can output Standard Klingon for all I care.
"Professional" is a dangerous weasel word which is rarely defined and never usefully defined. It almost invariably means "because I say so" with the implication that anyone who does not agree is a lesser human being. See also "safeguarding", "inappropriate", "privacy" and other synonyms for "because".
There were concerns the potential impact of the title may have been lessened for the very reasons elaborated by the open source figurehead, as well as possibly attracting unfair allegations we had failed to understand their arguably well-elucidated point.
C.
Single/plural in English isn't really that clear. There are aspects of informal vs formal, personal vs impersonal and definite vs indefinite involved.
E.g. the "royal we" - for very formal documents. "See who's at the door and find out what they want." was an example of the indefinite given here some time ago.
The oddest one of all: 2nd person singular is now archaic in English.
Then listen to His Orangeness speak for more than a minute, and ask yourself, "How many Donald Trumps are there?"
Regarding first person singular and the T/V distinction: either we started treating everyone with respect, or nobody with deference. Nice that other languages are saying to do the same.
Unpopular opinion, in an ideal world, commit messages would be in the past tense. They aren't intended for present-day you, who will hopefully remember what he did for at least a day or two. They are meant for future you, who will be looking back, probably wondering "how the hell did I end up here." It's the History, not the Ever-Precessing Stream of Consciousness.
The article says "The passive construction, which is overwhelmingly used in scientific papers and by many a technical writer,"
Passive voice has been discouraged for at least 30 years by scientific journals, at least in the biological sciences. There are a few old-timers I've worked with who still write in the passive voice but manuscripts get corrected by younger authors or the journal's editors prior to publication.
This post has been deleted by its author
>'This fixes a NULL pointer dereference in ..'
Or go telegraphic and just write:
"fixes null pointer dereference in ..."
Could be "fixes" or "fixed". Even using caps seems prolix unless talking about something actually case-sensitive.
Concise, telegraphic writing usually starts as active voice or is more like active voice.
My interpretation of LT's rant is that comments should be as short and clear as possible. Getting tied up in worrying about passive vs negative is a distraction.
A pretty deep level on the passive clause is given here: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922. The author of that literally wrote the book on English grammar. I suspect most readers will be surprised by just how much there is to it.
Gotcha! Mr. Ed. After all these years where you have tried to convince us that you came from a dirty-fingernail, un-washed hair family, closely related to the original Four Yorkshiremen living in a cardboard box, you have let slip the truth of your history: You went to school, a good school, where the teachers knocked Latin into your head by way of a cane applied to your rear. Because no-one, I mean absolutely no-one ever learned about the pluperfect subjunctive through English grammar class, but from being made to do conjugations and declensions in Latin class.
"slipping into the pluperfect subjunctive mood, a place of regret where your educational history is revealed."