An active voice indicates the subject performs the verb -- it is not just a matter of using pronouns like "we" or "you". So that sentence has an active voice ("An active voice" is the subject, "indicates" is the verb). A passive version might be: With an active voice, the verb is performed by the subject. Now "the verb" is the subject, and "is performed" is the verb. See the difference?
So in a passively voiced statement, the subject is acted upon. Grumpy is correct about the sentences in post 14; the subject is either "the streams we are talking about here" or "the streams being discussed here", and the verb is "are designed". The streams did not design, they were designed, therefore the voice is passive. An active way to say that might be: "The streams being discussed fit almost any data-handling purpose." Notice the somewhat superfluous phrase involving "designed" is no longer necessary. This is a good example of what I said earlier -- that passive voicing encourages long windedness.
How about: writing well is a good skill to learn, and it includes an understanding of the difference between passive and active voicing.
Last edited by MK27; 09-27-2011 at 03:16 PM.
C programming resources:
GNU C Function and Macro Index -- glibc reference manual
The C Book -- nice online learner guide
Current ISO draft standard
CCAN -- new CPAN like open source library repository
3 (different) GNU debugger tutorials: #1 -- #2 -- #3
cpwiki -- our wiki on sourceforge
In my opinion, Google Docs is more productive than a wiki for this kind of thing. The rich formatting is not relevant since the article will be posted to the main site, which means that I'll be doing the final HTML formatting anyway. Google docs provides the same worldwide read, and it allows anyone to add comments without an account; for write access, it's a wash. I also like Google Docs comments inline in the text.
There are two spaces between Bjarne and Stroustrup.
There's also a mountain of parentheticals in there, about 10% of the article! The rule I use is 'if you can't work it into the main text, question its usefulness.'
Given the title, I assume this is meant to be an introductory piece not a treatise, so stuff like:
can be omitted, especially as steampos is never mentioned again. IMO, of course.Both seek methods take an argument (of type streampos)
Good Idea, I'd remove some of the brackets.
And if some of the info seems redundant, I'd get rid of it.
It is never mentioned again in this introduction, but if I/we/gaia (or someone else) writes specific articles on the details, these small pieces of info can serve as links....can be omitted, especially as steampos is never mentioned again. IMO, of course.
If we're worried about punctuation: Notes on Punctuation, by Lewis Thomas
I thought this would help.There are no precise rules about punctuation (Fowler lays out some general advice (as best he can under the complex circumstances of English prose (he points out, for example, that we possess only four stops (the comma, the semicolon, the colon and the period (the question mark and exclamation point are not, strictly speaking, stops; they are indicators of tone (oddly enough, the Greeks employed the semicolon for their question mark (it produces a strange sensation to read a Greek sentence which is a straightforward question: Why weepest thou; (instead of Why weepest thou? (and, of course, there are parentheses (which are surely a kind of punctuation making this whole matter much more complicated by having to count up the left-handed parentheses in order to be sure of closing with the right number (but if the parentheses were left out, with nothing to work with but the stops we would have considerably more flexibility in the deploying of layers of meaning than if we tried to separate all the clauses by physical barriers (and in the latter case, while we might have more precision and exactitude for our meaning, we would lose the essential flavor of language, which is its wonderful ambiguity )))))))))))).