Edwynn
Posts: 4105
Joined: 10/26/2008 Status: offline
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The passive voice can be (and is, in fact) indicated by innumerably more devices than simply beginning a sentence with "There are," for those heretofore unaware. That wasn't the point. The paper in question was in fact specified to be in the passive voice. English teachers are just plain stupid, sorry, no escaping it. (PS: Take a German class and see if you still think that the passive voice is so 'boring'; the majority of most poetry, any language, is in the third person, while we're at it). Everyday conversation, simple reporting/relating of events, etc., are not always for purpose of entertainment, much as modern 'journalism' and unaware English professors wish it to be otherwise. If somebody is automatically bored by the use of "There are" at the beginning of a single sentence in a long and well-thought paper<, that is not the audience a thoughtful person would be seeking in the first place. Nor is it what professors and others seeking logical thought and relevant information are asking of me. To cut it short: screw the English professors who in fact have no proper understanding of the language other than it was handed to them a few years ago: the econ teachers and the German teachers have no complaint what was handed in from this corner. (Though I still got whacked, severely sometimes, when I was wrong, but in that regard only on valid points). I speak to the more more logical people, and have no apologies to make for it. One could start a sentence with "It could be surmised," "One could say," "The proposal is," or even, "There might be the assumption that," or any of fifty million other variants of "There are," but English professors being the best robots in academia, the latter example is the only one marked wrong, not because they understand why it might be wrong (elsewise 50 million other things should be marked wrong in logical accordance), but because that's all they ever understood in their whole academic process. Kind of scary, actually.
< Message edited by Edwynn -- 7/4/2012 11:36:22 AM >
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