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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (1645)	12/3/1998 3:09:00 AM
From: Jack Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

Steve: Everyone should avoid the passive when they* can use the active instead.* I agree there are many alternatives to use of passive voice. I seldom use it except in professional reports, where, unfortunately it has become standard jargon. The pulmonary artery was then ligated with silk and suture ligated with prolene. For some reason this has become standard, and it sounds peculiar or even presumptuous to say, "I ligated the pulmonary artery" or even more presumptuous to use the "royal" we. But the point of my post didn't concern the content of the sentence. I was trying to point out that the use of "their" as a singular pronoun does indeed have a distinguished history of "correct" use, if we define "correct" as English used in formal writing by educated and renowned writers. See the link in my last post regarding this usage by Jane Austin. But I still don't use "their" that way. Jack