How can you be more present in your writing?
The Zombies Test will tell you if you are falling into the trap of passive voice.
Here’s an explanation from Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean by Josh Bernoff:
“Attention must be paid to the state of our nation.”
It’s a great sentence right?
But who is supposed to pay attention?
Let’s apply the Zombies Test … If you can place “by zombies” after the verb, and it still makes sense, you have fallen into the trap of the passive voice.
“Attention must be paid (by zombies) to the state of our nation.”
There is a missing agent when you use the passive voice.
Activate your writing with the active voice and mean what you say!
Zombies must pay attention to the state of our nation!Why is passive voice a problem?
You might read a report about all the things that need to be done in an organization.
These are the issues that need to be solved….
No one is named responsible, no one claims responsibility, and nothing gets done.
Because the passive voice is popular in academic writing, we often fall into it unconsciously. Use the Zombies Test and eliminate the passive voice so that your reader is not left with that eerie feeling that zombies are about to show up.
In a world where school assignments must have a word minimum, we are not encouraged to say what we mean, just to have enough words. Other manuals of style are generic to cover many types of writing. Writing Without Bullshit focuses on business writing where the most important thing is to get your point across clearly and succinctly. Writing for other reasons can have other motivations, but writing without bullshit is the rule of writing for business. If you want to be successful in business, says Josh Bernoff, learn to say what you mean and mean what you say!
Activate your writing
“You are loved.” (passive voice)
becomes
“I love you.” (active voice)
For more writing tips, read the book and visit the website withoutbullshit.com.
Writing Tips for Business Email
from https://withoutbullshit.com/goodies#tips
