THE ACTIVE AND THE PASSIVE

In his piece of absolute f%&king genius Politics and the English Language, George Orwell suggested that we should always use the active instead of the passive in political writing.

Most of you will know that if you change a sentence from the active…

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet

to the passive…

Hamlet was written by Shakespeare

there is a resultant change in emphasis. In the first sentence the emphasis is on Shakespeare and in the second the emphasis is on Hamlet. We use the passive when to suggest it is not too important who did the action.

Another example could be that in the heat of the moment you might say…

Some pr*ck just stole my camera.

and then a few years later when you have calmed down about it you might say…

My camera was stolen by some pr*ck.

Why am I talking about this?

Because I have just seen this headline on the BBC site..

‘BALLS REJECTS SATS ACCUSATIONS’

and it suggests a huge number of possibilities [for those of you who don't know that is Schools Secretary Ed Balls].

Just a comma and a capital can make a huge difference in meaning. Observe the difference between these two sentences.

1. Rejection of SATS accusations was balls

2. Rejection of SATS accusations was Balls’

Hey, I’m just playing with words here. The government wants us all to get onside and be part of the team.

In this article I am just playing the same game that New Labour have been playing for years. That game is in fact the reason that most people don’t even care if what they say/do is balls/Balls’ [or indeed Balls' balls] or bullsh*t or true anymore.

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