'I was flattered' 'to be told' that my thoughts on the passive 'had been noticed'...

One thing I've noticed about unsolicited comments on one of my books is that I'm often surprised by what a reader had actually noticed, especially when it's a passage that you'd forgotten you'd ever written - which is what happened in this particular case: a short section on when speakers might find the passive tense useful and occasionally ignore the blanket recommendation against it by the designers of grammar checkers like the one that comes with Micosoft Word.

Twitter's response:
Another thing I've now learned is that Twitter can generate some interesting and unexpected interpretations of whatever it is that you've written.

About a week ago, Brad Phillips posted a blog asking 'Why passive language isn't as bad as you think'. In a later tweet, he asked "What did you think of @maxatkinson's arguments for strategic times to employ the passive voice?" which prompted Ned Barnett (@nedbarnett) , to whom thanks also, came back with the following series of tweets (with my reaction to each one in red):

"No offense to Mr Atkinson, but I thought his example of research was weak and straw-manish, deflecting... (reading it again, I didn't think what I wrote about its use to convey 'generality, objectivity and detachment' was too far off the mark). 

"There are uses for the passive voice, but not in PR, speechmaking or to the media - it's a responsibility dodge... (Agreed).

"his most telling examples were the bureaucratic ones, where responsibility must be avoided at all costs... (Agreed, but I thought that's more or less what I'd written)

"In the real world. there aren't many cases where passive voice statements can't be improved by active voice." (Maybe, but I'm less than fully convinced by this).

 As I have no problem with most of what Mr Barnett said, I was a bit disappointed that there was very little for us to have an argument about.  I was also disappointed to realise that he (and presumably other readers) might have fewer grounds for complaint if only I'd been taken more care about how I had worded the original.

On the plus side:
But I'm still very grateful to Messrs. Philllips and Barnett, not only for spreading the word about my book to a much bigger English-speaking market than there is in the UK, but also for getting me to think more closely about two other speeches where detachment and neutrality definitely did matter or does matter.

I'm referring to Nelson Mandela's speech on release from prison and those of the annual Queen's speeches to the UK parliament. I hadn't inspected the texts of the speeches to see whether or not the passive features in them, but it's something that may now be well worth doing - as background to which, see The Queen's Speech: an exception that proves the ruler).

(Details of my next open course on Speechwriting & Presentation are HERE).
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Is Paddy Ashdown reverting to type after 32 years?



Paddy Ashdown's speech to the Liberal Democrat Conference earlier today made me wonder whether he might be reverting to type after the 32 years since he made his first televised speech at a Liberal Assembly.

Although not wearing a tie may have recently become the fashion among top politicians (and business leaders), it certainly wasn't in 1981 - even if you were a prospective parliamentary candidate who was going to have wait another two years before knowing whether or not you would succeed in becoming an M.P.

But that didn't stop the young PPC for Yeovil, who spoke sans tie and sans suit - though, as I noted in my original post of the clip, 'the podium unfortunately prevents us from seeing whether or not he was also wearing sandals' (HERE):

In the same post, I also noted 'This was Ashdown in post-military mode, barking out his lines to the troops' ,  and I was struck by the fact that there seemed to be quite a lot of 'barking' in the way he delivered his lines to the troops this morning (see the above clip).



But in one aspect of his delivery this morning he was not reverting to type, as he seems to have taken a leaf out of Nick Clegg's book when it comes to the apparently unscripted 'management guru' style of delivery - which, as regular readers will know, I regard as something of a mixed blessing, at least until the jury returns...


Other posts on the 'management guru' style of speaking:


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George Osborne speaks into thin air at a building site somewhere in London

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Readers will know that I've been mystified by the locations at which the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have delivered some rather important recent speeches (see list of related posts below).

Finding out exactly where, when and to whom he made his speech on the economy this morning has been quite a challenge.

The Daily Express tells us that he was at a building site in East London and, according to Sky News, he was "addressing an audience of academics, think tanks and businesses in London'.

As usual at such events, there was no hint of a response from anyone in the audience, if indeed anyone was there at all.

Also as usual, there's a weird backdrop of a blank window with a bar chart to the left that looks like a rather creative use of scaffolding - unless, of course, it's the latest in templates from PowerPoint...


Related Posts:

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