[potatoyogurt]

While I agree with the general point that basic and direct sentence structure is not always the right choice, there is no passive voice in the sentence you quoted.

"it is a truth universally acknowledged" -> impersonal construction

"a single man... must be in want of a wife" -> this is active voice, man is still the subject of the sentence and be is the the only verb. "Want" is a noun. See https://www.dictionary.com/browse/want, definition 14.

[thaumasiotes]

> there is no passive voice in the sentence you quoted

There is no finite passive verb, but "acknowledged" is a passive form in the sentence in question. It's just a participle rather than a finite verb.

[potatoyogurt]

okay, you're right, i wasn't paying attention. shame on me. Still, I think it is a stretch to point to the use of this passive participle as the reason why this sentence works or doesn't work.

[thaumasiotes]

> okay, you're right, i wasn't paying attention. shame on me.

I find this attitude troubling in combination with the argument made all over this thread that you can tell the people who say not to use passives are full of it because they can't even identify a passive when they're looking at one. (And you're at least flirting with that argument in your comment above.)

It's completely true that the advice not to use passives is spurious. That advice is an American cultural phenomenon in the same way that advice not to sleep in a room with a running electric fan is a Korean cultural phenomenon, and it's just as valid.

But it's kind of difficult to simultaneously make the arguments that (1) You don't know what you're saying; you can't even tell whether a verb is passive or not, and (2) OK, this verb is passive and I didn't notice, but that shouldn't take anything away from my arguments.

I'd prefer to see the case for passive usage made based on the actual purpose the passive serves (letting you rearrange the elements of the sentence, so that the order in which they are presented better suits the overall flow of the discourse) than based on gotchas.

[potatoyogurt]

I think maybe you're getting the wrong impression about the tone I intend (my fault, I am not putting a lot of effort into tone or careful writing). I realize that what I wrote can be read very passive aggressively. I meant it more just as acknowledging that I made a dumb mistake and chiding myself for it. In person, that would have been clearer.

This week has been busy and stressful and I wrote both comments quickly and off the cuff. It's not that I can't tell that acknowledged is a passive participle, it's just that I didn't even look at it because I was pattern matching against common mistakes I've seen people make. It was only afterwards that I noticed that the parent comment specifically pointed to the word "acknowledged."

> I find this attitude troubling in combination with the argument made all over this thread that you can tell the people who say not to use passives are full of it because they can't even identify a passive when they're looking at one. (And you're at least flirting with that argument in your comment above.)

This is not what I'm saying, and it's not the argument I would make if I were actually making an argument. I said very few words, and not very carefully chosen ones, and you're putting words into my mouth. I made no case for or against passive voice. I just thought I saw a mistake briefly and I was trying to point it out.