Passive Voice Editor: Robert Waltz 
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There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.
― Charles Baxter, Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction
Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn't get it; tears were shed; comfort proffered.
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars |
One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever received was: "The passive voice should be avoided."
It is great advice, partly because active sentences are objectively stronger, but mostly because the advice is written in passive voice.
Like all writing advice, it's important to know when to stick to it and when to ignore it. As you might expect from the genre of this newsletter, comedy is one of the reasons to ignore it.
Let's take that Platonic ideal of passive voice sentences, the one that excels at deflecting blame: "Mistakes were made." You say that to your ex, or some other enemy, and there's a chance they'll accept it as an apology, thinking you meant "I made the mistakes," when you're actually leaving that part ambiguous because, obviously, they made the mistakes.
I'll admit that there are often good reasons to use passive voice. "She was shot," for example, is actually more straightforward than its active-voice equivalent, "Someone shot her." Both carry the same implication (unless the thing doing the shooting was an AI-powered drone). But the former is just part of everyday life in the US, while the latter raises questions like "who did it?" when the police haven't bothered to find out.
Speaking of police, they absolutely excel at deflecting blame from themselves through passive voice. Once you see it, you'll never stop seeing it. Like, if I ran a red light, the report would be like, "A vehicle ran a red light." While if a cop did it, it'd be "A red light was run."
In fairness, passive voice can be used (see what I did there) in those situations to avoid issues with accusation. But from a comedy standpoint, it's much, much funnier to deliberately deflect responsibility from subject to object. "Jack's Diner gave me food poisoning" can be legally actionable, but "I was afflicted with food poisoning after eating at Jack's Diner." The latter is plausibly deniable when Jack's lawyers come knocking, leaving open the possibility that some other food made you sick and you just happened to also eat at Jack's.
That sort of ambiguity is, of course, why passive voice is advised against. (Dammit, I keep doing it.) But as long as the ambiguity can be resolved in your favor, hey, go ahead. If it works for the cops, it should work for you, too, right? |
Some funnies:
| |  | Black and Blue [E] #2223285 A response to a Writer's Cramp prompt. My mind went to proof of klutziness. |
| | | Just Sayin' [ASR] #2296794 An exercise in filling empty space with random noise |
| | | What I Did [E] #1729069 Sometimes, you make a mistake, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. |
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https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
Last time, in "Fool Disclosure" , I talked about April Fools' Day.
andiprescott  : Never heard this before: Comedy Christmas, or, as it's more commonly known, April Fools' Day.- just brilliant.
Yeah, pretty sure I came up with it.
So that's it for me for April! See you next month. Until then,
LAUGH ON!!!
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Comedy: April 22, 2026 Issue [#13705]
