Based on the chapter in Williams & Bizup of the same name.
The question in the last section: what is actually happening? Highlight that action as the verb.
Now: who is actually doing the thing? Let's be clear and obvious about that too.
An example:
Failure to deliver the product on time was a result of the lack of a complete set of requirements.
We can at least get rid of the nominalizations. Maybe that will help.
The product was not delivered on time because a complete set of requirements was not available.
Who failed to deliver? Where were the requirements supposed to come from? We could (make those up and) insert them into the sentence:
The product was not delivered on time by the developers because a complete set of requirements was not available from the product owner.
That's better, but…
The subjects in the sentence don't tell us who the character is:
The product was not delivered on time […] because a complete set of requirements was not available […].
The grammatical subjects here are abstract, not actual characters that did things.
If we make the subjects the characters, it's more clear what's happening:
The developers were unable to deliver the product on time because the product owner did not provide a complete set of requirements.
Previous lesson: try to make actions into verbs.
Here: try to make the character the subject of the sentence.
Again, start by looking at the first 7–8 words.
A decision about forcibly administering medication in an emergency room setting despite the inability of an irrational patient to provide legal consent is usually an on-scene medical decision. Williams & Bizup, 11th ed, p. 53
Is there an obvious character there? Is the character explicitly the subject of a verb?
No to either? Bad sign.
Look for the real character: attached to a nominalization; object of by
or of
; only implied.
Here, maybe the patient or medical staff.
A decision about forcibly administering medication in an emergency room setting despite the inability of an irrational patient to provide legal consent is usually an on-scene medical decision. Williams & Bizup, 11th ed, p. 53
Look for the action to go with the character.
A decision about forcibly administering medication in an emergency room setting despite the inability of an irrational patient to provide legal consent is usually an on-scene medical decision. Williams & Bizup, 11th ed, p. 53
Who is doing what?
Put the characters and actions where they belong.
If a patient cannot provide legal consent in an emergency room, the medical staff on the scene must decide whether or not to administer medication without their consent.
Rewrite this sentence.
The focus of the architecture community was on the elimination of the gap between the programming language and the processor instruction set, the goal was simplification of the compiler rather than acceleration of execution. Fred?
Sometimes (and often in technical writing) there is no obvious character.
Running times are most relevant when working with large data sets.
You can force a character into the story:
Programmers should worry more about running times when working with large data sets.
But is that right? Should it be programmers, algorithm designers, and architects
?
It's really a general statement with no clear character.
One should worry more about running times when working with large data sets.
Gross. 😷
In this case, there is a character:
Running times are most relevant when working with large data sets.
Running times
are doing something here: being relevant.
For us, running times
are a virtual character.
We're familiar with them. We know they do things (cause slow/fast execution, be proved, affect choice of data structure, …).
This doesn't make as much sense if the reader isn't familiar with the abstract character.
Dimensionality reduction decreases the time and space required for the model.
The sentence reads better if the character is understood by the reader.
Time and space for the model is decreased by dimensionality reduction.
A machine learning expert can decrease time and space for the model with dimensionality reduction.
At least you can understand the plot, even if you don't get the details.
Another abstract character:
The cognitive function of immediate intention is the monitoring and guidance of ongoing bodily movement. Myles Brand, Intending and Acting, via Williams and Bizup
We use immediate intention to monitor and guide our bodies as we move them. Williams & Bizup, 11th ed, p. 51
Try to make the character the subject of the sentence.
Try to make the subject a flesh-and-blood character if you can. Use a familiar abstract character if you must.
Rewrite this sentence, keeping characters and actions in mind.
The types that are part of the Java platform are members of various packages that bundle classes by function: fundamental classes are injava.lang, classes for reading and writing (input and output) are injava.io, and so on. You can put your types in packages too. Java Tutorials, Creating and Using Packages
Active voice: what we have been trying to do. Character is the subject; action is the verb.
Also the “goal” or “receiver” is the object of the verb. e.g.
I merged the changes .
Passive voice: the verb is generally written as was/were/will be
and the actual action's past participle.
The subject holds the goal/receiver. The character is off in the wilderness.
The changes were merged by me .
General advice is to avoid the passive voice. That's what we've been promoting here.
But it's not always the right choice…
The passive voice allows omission of the responsible character.
The changes were merged.
Who merged them?
Sometimes that's necessary and appropriate. Maybe the character is unknown or not important to the story.
e.g. we're trying to explain that the code was changed to fix a time-sensitive bug.
The changes were merged on Friday because….
Gary merged the changes on Friday because….
Someone merged the changes on Friday because….
Gary
isn't important to the story. Someone
draws unnecessary attention to the lack of a character.
Active vs passive puts the character and goal at opposite ends of the sentence. Sometimes you want the passive order.
This can make one sentence flow into the next more smoothly.
For example, we're telling a story about a bugfix. The second sentence seems to be about something else:
The changeset written by Adrienne and her team was carefully tested. She merged and resolved conflicts on the changeset to fix the bug.
We can keep the changeset
as the subject of both sentences:
The changeset written by Adrienne and her team was carefully tested. The changeset was merged and conflicts were resolved to fix the bug.
Try to make the subject a flesh-and-blood character if you can. Use a familiar abstract character if you must.
… But use the passive voice if it actually makes things better.
In a complicated discussion, it's easy to end up with very complex subjects (or objects):
Binary tree leaf node pointers are null.
The big noun phrase is hard to mentally parse:
Binary tree leaf node pointers are null.
It's easy enough to warp the sentence into something much more readable:
The pointers in the leaf nodes of a binary tree are null.
A binary tree's leaf nodes contain pointers which are null.
If you have a nominalization in there, we can do even better:
Constructor property initialization is intended to…
Constructors initialize properties so that…
Rewrite these sentences.
Enforcement of guidelines for new automobile tire durability must be an FTC responsibility. Williams & Bizup, 11th ed, p. 63
The goal of this article is to describe text comprehension processes and recall protocol production. Williams & Bizup, 11th ed, p. 63