[ECOLOG-L] Not now I've seen it all - says Orwell

[William Silvert]

Several subscribers have disagreed with my statement about passive/active 
voice, and I stand corrected. Perhaps the case was best stated by someone 
who wrote me off-list to say "I have noticed a change in the last 4 
years...I was instructed by many to use the passive voice and to shy away 
from the active voice which very often required the use of first person 
pronouns.  But in the last year, a growing trend has led away from the use 
of passives.  Just today, when haphazardly choosing 3 abstracts from the 
most recent issue of Science, I found all to be written in the active voice 
and found the first person 'we' in two of them...I think 'modern scientific 
writing' may indeed be evolving again."

I am pleased to be shown wrong and commend the scientific community for this 
stylistic improvement.

Bill Silvert