Post #3827966
2026-07-15 08:13 UTC
@xahteiwi@mastodon.social the first three are all grammatically correct, but subtlety different. The first would generally be frowned upon by most style guides as it's passive, though could also be intentionally ambiguous (it is not clear who will do the clarifying.) The second puts emphasis on the action ('clarifying' verb). The third puts emphasis on the ambiguity of the point (you could also say "the point is unclear" with an implicit action.)
Replies (1)
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@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange 2026-07-15 08:23
@philbetts@mastodon.social @xahteiwi@mastodon.social All three are passive. As my Latin teacher said, the easiest way to spot a passive sentence is to see if it makes sense if you append ‘by heffalump’. None of them have an actor: the point is always being clarified by an unspecified entity. If your style guide doesn’t like the passive voice (in the ‘90s, people got obsessed with this, now most just tell you not to overuse it) then all of them are bad. And, generally, that’s probably good for this kind of statement because a point that needs clarifying needs a specific person to clarify it.