January 29, 2026
Passive‑aggressive grammar brawl
The passive in English (2011)
Linguist explains passive voice; commenters cry pedantry, politics, and vibes
TLDR: A linguist lays out what the passive voice really is and mocks common misuse, sparking a firestorm. Commenters clap back that pedantry misses how headlines use passives to dodge blame, turning the thread into a battle over clarity, accountability, and the power of wording.
A 2,500-word explainer on the English passive by linguist Geoffrey Pullum just dropped on Language Log, and the comments delivered pure internet theater. Pullum calls out folks who bash the passive without knowing what it is, insists it’s a technical clause thing (not “lacking energy”), and even says he won’t use the term “voice.” Cue the chorus: “pedant of the worst kind,” snaps one commenter, while another argues the examples he mocks are “functionally passive” and would be stronger if they named the doer. It’s grammar cops vs. plain‑English warriors.
The thread gets spicy fast. One reader struggles through a jumbo sentence, calling that parenthetical a doozy. Another drags headline writers for using passive to hide blame—“Thousands were killed”… by who? Who did that? Nobody knows! Meanwhile, the crowd riffs on classics like “Mistakes were made” as the passive hall of fame, and a techy commenter turns it into a party trick: ask an AI to quiz you on what’s passive and watch everyone argue. The mood swings between eye‑rolling and nerd glee, with jokes about “finding your voice (just not that voice).” Whether you love precision or live for vibes, this grammar brawl has receipts—and memes.
Key Points
- •The post defines and clarifies what constitutes a passive clause in English, addressing common misidentifications.
- •‘Passive’ is a technical syntactic term and cannot be reliably understood via common-sense or dictionary definitions.
- •The analysis focuses on passive clauses rather than passive sentences or passive verbs, due to structural complexity.
- •The author criticizes definitions that rely on “passive verb forms,” asserting English lacks distinct passive verb morphology.
- •The essay avoids the term ‘voice’ and introduces NP, VP, and PP as working abbreviations to explain clause structure.