I am a technical writer so much of what I
write must be very clear and precise. Every
class on technical writing (at least in the US)
stresses active voice as the best solution.
Many out-and-out suggest never using passive
voice.

Professionally, I do use it sometimes. There are
rare occasions when rewriting something into
active voice makes it longer and less useful to
the current task or purpose of what I’m writing.

I’d also like to comment on the marketing vs.
clear, short writing. What I was taught, and
try very hard to follow, is that good writing
fits the audience and the purpose they will
use the information for.

If the purpose is marketing, then the point is
to convince the audience which is much more
about emotions than about clear, sensible
reality. If the point is for an academic to
review and become interested in a new thesis,
then the language must be comfortable for
the academic even if that seems jargon filled
and silly to me. If the point is for a user
to be able to use software to accomplish a
goal, then it must both fit the user’s
actual goal (sometimes hard to know) and
be understandable to the user.

That said, short lucid writing that fits the
purpose and audience is always better. It’s
also rare and to be enjoyed deeply when
you encounter it.

Most technical writing, especially instruction manuals, should be written in the active voice to avoid confusion. For example “Check the checkbox”, instead of “The check box should be checked” (by you in this step? or should be like that when you got to that step? if it isn’t, do you have to go back a step?)

A technical writer I worked with would not use the active voice because she said it sounded rude. Her native language was not English – is the active/passive voice used differently in other languages, in this respect?

“After years of fussing about the pathetic, baffled language of students, I realized that it was not in their labored writings that bad language dwelt. /This/, this inane gabble, this was bad language. Evil language. Here was a man taking the public money for the work of his mind and darkening counsel by words without understanding.”
-Richard Mitchell, Less than Words Can Say

John, I sound like I’m on some pyramid-selling scheme, but the Joseph Williams book I mentioned before, Style: Towards Clarity and Grace talks sense about the passive voice (and much else). The book deals with all kinds of writing, not just the New Yorkerish stuff that most guides deal with, and so he’s realistic about its usefulness in some contexts.

And Orwell’s rule 6 isn’t a sufficient let-out, I’m afraid, because the results may be ridiculous without being “outright barbarous” (maybe “barbarous” meant something different way back when).

Jolyon, I’m a fan of the Orwell essay and have written about it here before. It did make me laugh to see Joseph Williams neat dissection of Orwell’s failure to follow his own advice in that same essay. Oh well. We love him for his moral courage, if not always for his sentences.