I would agree that "close match" isn't a lot better, but the style in science papers is to say something like "A is a close match for B (r=.85)", where of course the precise value of metric and whether that is a close match or a terrible fit is specific to the field it's being published in. But the "very" really does add nothing.

The other reason is probably that "very" is very easy to detect in a bash script, whereas looking for other, more subtle weasels is a lot harder. Given the generally poor level of scientific writing (I have certainly given my PhD advisor some turds), huge improvements can be had by just going after the easiest cases.

To be fair, the author did say:

> There are times when the passive voice is acceptable in technical writing.

> I also believe, as with adverbs, that removal of the passive voice would have been a net improvement for over half the technical writing I've edited. (That is, students abuse the passive voice more often than they use it well.)

The author himself is not against passive voice. He simply has not found that students have used it appropriately.

I myself was a bit humored by the way in which this article, while probably well founded, probably violates some of its own advice in that it is not backing up claims with data and facts, but generalizations which have come from personal experience.

You're right, but he's taking about a particular style of writing for a specific audience. His "rules" seem reasonable enough within that context.

The passive voice prohibition is more of a lazy pedagogical tool than sound style advice. Nothing wrong with using it, but it's often used poorly, and it's easier to say don't use it at all than to explain how to use it well.

My favourite "style guide" is Clear And Simple As The Truth: Writing Classic Prose by Francis-Noël Thomas & Mark Turner, which takes the time to explain what it means by "style" and has almost nothing to say about passive voice and adverbs.

I really don't get what's wrong with passive voice at all. In my mother tongue (Turkish) and my L3 (Italian) passive voice is a part of the educated speech. Certainly it is harder to use than direct speech (in most cases), but why neglect it?

I agree with the criticism of the criticism of the passive voice (that is, I think it's often appropriate to use it, and a blanket prohibition is wrong).

A couple of ideas:

* There's an idea that passive voice is inappropriate because it "avoids responsibility" (for example, because it does not say who made a decision or performed an action, where that information might be important). An example could be when an organization says "your application was denied" (where it would somehow seem more honest or more relevant to say "we denied your application" or "the vice president denied your application"), or in a political context referring to violence without referring to the perpetrator of that violence -- "thirty people were killed" (by whom?).

However, critics have pointed out that these concerns don't correspond perfectly to the active/passive voice distinction, among other things because we can still state who was responsible when using the passive voice and because we can still avoid stating who was responsible when using the active voice. Also, sometimes clear or honest writing wouldn't need to assign responsibility at every moment, in every context, or in every sentence.

* There's an idea that the passive voice is inappropriate because it sounds too formal and hence makes writing less accessible, less enjoyable to read, or lends the writing an unwarranted air of authority. The active voice may sound more direct or straightforward in many contexts, while the passive voice may sound unduly formal, abstract, or academic.

This is probably also true, but doesn't appear to justify a blanket prohibition either.

* Edit: also compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime, a writing style that tries to avoid using the copula (certain uses of the verb "to be"), based on the view that it makes philosophically unjustified observer-independent claims that could be made more precise by showing whose perception or belief is being described (like "spinach is yucky" vs. "George H. W. Bush dislikes spinach" or "George H. W. Bush finds spinach yucky"). The copula isn't the same as the passive voice, but this is a (controversial) example of another way in which people have suggested constraining their writing in support of "taking responsibility" for certain propositions or observations.

A response for each of you points, not really for starting an argument, but for stating my view of the matter.

1) The language allows you to emphasise either the object or the subject. Either way, though, both a passive and an active version of a given sentence can hide or tell some information equally. Compare:

The pizza was eaten.

Somebody ate the pizza. (The amount of info these sentences give is practically equivalent.)

It's more about the author, whether or not he wants to tell something to the reader.

2) Passive need not be formal in all its uses, nor does every text need be formal and accessible, and a formal text is not necessarily inaccessible.

3) That's a crazy nitpicking and a silly exaggeration. Copula-heavy text is boring to read, but while the copula verb and the auxiliary verb for passive forms are the same (to be), in its second role, it is not also acting as a copula. The verb 'to be' is not the copula, but one of its uses is as the copula. So if one wants to give up on copula, however mad that may be, he need not give up on all the uses of the verb to be. That said, if it is an artistic choice to avoid copula to the extent possible, I can't really criticise that. It can't be affirmed as a general rule though.

Edit: Oh, also, in a sentence like "Bob seems terrible.", 'to seem' is basically a copula. Copula is basically any verb that links the subject to a predicative.

> A response for each of you points, not really for starting an argument, but for stating my view of the matter.

Thanks for responding.

> [...] while the copula verb and the auxiliary verb for passive forms are the same (to be), in its second role, it is not also acting as a copula. The verb 'to be' is not the copula, but one of its uses is as the copula. So if one wants to give up on copula, however mad that may be, he need not give up on all the uses of the verb to be.

I agree that E-Prime users should try to distinguish between copulative and non-copulative uses of "to be" and that passives are non-copulative. By mentioning E-Prime, I was just trying to draw an analogy with another way of restricting language in the name of "taking responsibility".

> Edit: Oh, also, in a sentence like "Bob seems terrible.", 'to seem' is basically a copula. Copula is basically any verb that links the subject to a predicative.

According to E-Prime users, using "seems" instead of "is" could typically make the scope and basis for disagreements clearer (because then you can talk more readily about to whom something seems a certain way?).

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the passive voice, but people overuse it. For example, I've edited technical documents that used the passive voice so frequently that I lost track of what was being done by the user and what was being done automatically.

Because it's not a case of baby and bathwater, where the thing you don't want to throw is millions of times more valuable than the one you want to throw away.

Here, the two things that might be thrown away are of the same value (justifiable passive voice vs unjustifiable passive voice), and it's not that big a value to begin with.

Plus, you have a perfectly good replacement (active voice).

Lastly, it's just a general advice for people who overuse unjustified passive voice. It's not supposed to be subtle. If those people could understand subtlety they'd kept the justified passive voice themselves when it's appropriate.

I don't think anyone seriously advocates avoiding it entirely. For example, even Strunk and White say: "This rule does not, of course, mean that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary." (http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk5.html#11)

> He doesn't even correctly identify what weasel words are. ("Some people say", "It is believed", etc).

Agreed, the scripts can use improvements like these. Its a start.

I'd also add 'but' if its not there yet. Its function is to negate everything written before it which easily leads to fallacies.

> I'm not sure why 'very close match' is any more opinionated than 'close match' is.

Because 'close' in 'close match' is informative. Without 'close' you get 'match'. So close tells us about the state of the match.

Very is redundant at best. Very is also emotional, its function is to (consciously or not) attempt to induce an emotional response in the reader; ie. to manipulate the reader. You want to avoid all of the above in a scientific paper.

Its important to note that we can reach for perfection whilst writing. Because such a goal is far fetched it makes more sense to improve ourselves via iterations. (Same with these scripts, or software development in general.)

>Nobody should be using Strunk and White as a style guide after primary school. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with passive voice, or adverbs, or any of the other things that he mentions here.

That's just ONE counter source. Hardly enough to make the case.

While there might be nothing "fundamentally wrong with passive voice, or adverbs, or any of the other things that he mentions", there is a lot that's fundamentally wrong with how those things are abused by the majority of people.

Surely the burden is on the proof, not the counter?

`very` should almost never be used. It simply doesn't add anything but leaves the reader guessing.