> >>> any symbols it references. This may result in those symbols getting > >>> discarded by GCC as unreferenced. > > > > We can omit "by GCC" here. > > We can, but we should not. We should avoid the passive voice like the > plague in technical documentation, even if doing so leads to some > slight redundancy.
I agree, but that's still passive voice (you need not omit the actor to be using passive voice)! Active voice (which is indeed preferred) is "This may result in GCC discarding those symbols as unreferenced." (For those who don't know, a good test of whether something is the passive voice is that you *could* remove the actor and the sentence would still be grammatically correct. That's the case above.) Writing in the passive voice with the actor present is indeed better than the passive voice with the actor removed, but the active voice is still the preferred style.
