"Poker, Gaming, and Life" review

[John Cole]

Rog erred here. He needs to add "be" to make the sentence passive and change "show" to "showing." "I will show" is active: "I will be showing" is passive.

[John Cole]

Howard,

As David might answer, "No." [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

First person narrative: "I walked into the room."

Third person: "He walked into the room."

Some writers use second person narrative; the novel Bright Lights, Big City is the most famous example: "You walked into the room."

John

[BruceZ]

I think what voice is used is the least of the reader's problems, and he will understand or not understand depending on how competent he is, regardless of what voice is used.

Or to put it a better way: I think it matters little to the reader what voice the author uses, and the understanding of the reader depends on the reader's competence, regardless of voice. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

I'm being facetious. When I do important writing, I always include a pass which attemps to replace each linking verb such as "is" with an active verb. The removal of unnecessary words makes writing much stronger. In time, this becomes habit, and can even cause the author's thinking itself to become more direct. This is analagous to a computer programmer who develops a style that allows him to write efficient code, or to a mathematician who can prove things very elegantly, as opposed than a lesser skilled person who would use more roundabout logic.

When I used to write software, management always wanted me to document everything so others could understand the system, and of course this is standard practice. The problem was, no matter how much I documented, some people would never understand, while other people could figure things out for themselves without extensive documentation. So my saying was: "For those who understand, extensive explanation is not necessary. For those who do not understand, sufficient explanation is not possible."

[Gus Contos]

John erred here. "I will show" is in simple future tense; "I will be showing" is in future progressive tense. Both are in the active voice.

We can't really convert this fragment to passive voice because we don't know the object of the verb "show".

GC

[John Cole]

Gus,

Absolutely; I realized the error when I thought about it, and I tried to make the form passive by adding the "be." In a future post, you will be shown by me how to do it. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[andyfox]

This is the type of criticism up with which John should not put.

[RollaJ]

Sklansky's use of the passive voice is probably not the worst aspect of his writing.

Andy, would that be considered "passive" aggressive? [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

[Sredni Vashtar]

Some are born indispensable, some achieve indipensability and some have indispensableness thrust upon 'em. To such, what of voice?

Sredni

[LloydXmas]

See pg. 7 of the link below. (It's a cartoon I did a couple of years ago.)
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