Interlude: Passive Voice, Writing Inspiration, and Argument Dilution

What is the writing topic I get asked about most often?

When to use or avoid passive voice.

This topic has been debated among researchers in the sciences for a while. And with good reason. The guidelines and conventions have changed over the years.

To settle the debate, I created the Passive Voice Primer, a short course to help you learn how to use active and passive voice to strengthen your scientific and medical writing.

This course will help you:

🧐 Learn why passive voice has been a conventional practice in science.

❗️ Understand the real problem with passive voice in scientific and medical writing.

🧰 Use passive voice as a strategic writing tool that engages, informs, and persuades readers.

​Learn more and enroll in the Passive Voice Primer​

Now onto this week's round-up...

💌 Round-up

👓 Reading

Five Decisions That Are Better Than Waiting for Inspiration​
In this article, Ben Riggs shares five things you can do when you lack inspiration in your writing: show up, embrace the hard work of the sentence, work from a plan, clear your throat, and hoist the sail. This article is worth the read not only for Ben's excellent advice, but also for his beautiful use of words.

​Friday Forward - Argument Dilution (#432)​
"When individuals are presented with a large amount of argumentative information, which inevitably includes a mixture of strong and weak arguments, the weaker arguments stand out most in the listener’s mind, diluting the overall strength of the case. This dilution means that adding more argumentative points will often damage an otherwise persuasive message unless the added statements are extremely compelling."

🧰 Tools

With Emoji Kitchen, you can combine two emojis into one. Although the website will not combine all emojis, you can still have some fun creating new combinations.

💬 Quote

“The passive voice invariably comes across as pontificating, patronizing, talking down. It sounds insincere, even dishonest, and it makes the reader uncomfortable, not trusting, though usually the reader cannot put her finger on why.” – Henriette Anne Klauser, author of Writing on Both Sides of the Brain

✅ Action

Settle the debate between active and passive voice by checking out the Passive Voice Primer. And share the link with a colleague or friend to help put their mind at ease as well.

Thank you so much for reading.

Warmly,

Crystal