Re: [Phys-L] passive or active voice

[Chuck Britton <cvbritton@mac.com>]

'Back in the Day' a low temp theoretician was preparing to submit his latest paper to Phys. Rev. Letters when he was told that his use of the First Person Plural in a paper having only one author would result in immediate rejection.
Instead of rewriting the paper,  his cat appeared as the second author.

;-)


F. D. C. Willard went on to be the sole author of a later paper.

On Sep 11, 2013, at 6:21 PM, John Denker <jsd@av8n.com> wrote:

> On 09/11/2013 02:06 PM, Bill Nettles wrote:
> > When you have students write a report of an experimental activity, do
> > you expect them to write primarily in active voice, passive voice, or
> > do you let them choose? 
>
> The only real requirement is clarity.
> De gustibus non disputandum.
>
> FWIW it hath been perceived by me that ye olde passive
> voice hath largely gone by ye wayside, along with ye
> electrical "condensers".
>
> On 09/11/2013 02:30 PM, marx@phy.ilstu.edu wrote:
>
> > > the focus should be on the 
> > > experiment and not on the particular experimenters
>
> That may be, but that's mostly a separate question.  Very
> often, you can focus /directly/ on the experiment, with no
> need for active agency *or* passive agency:
>  "In the first set of measurements, the RMS 
>   voltage was 1.23(45) volts."
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