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by stiglitz 2043 days ago
Passive voice can be used to omit the doer of the action, which is preferable when the action itself is the focus. The choice between active and passive voice should be based on this choice of focus. You can’t say categorically that the active voice is better than passive, classical rule of thumb notwithstanding.
2 comments

Yeah, but to people who see what you’re doing, it’s clear that you’re dodging responsibility. Like, focusing on the action is preferable because it takes emphasis off the doer. I prefer that folks just say “we did the thing” instead of saying “the thing was done”. We know who did it, trying to shade that fact away with grammar just looks suspicious.
Go for it. Meanwhile those of who like having clients will avoid directly blaming them.
>Passive voice can be used to omit the doer of the action, which is preferable when the action itself is the focus.

Behold, the most important thing to know about business writing:

>Chris broke the build.

>The build was broken.

"The team decided to let chris break the build." ;)
Still to finger-pointy. Try "a build breakage occurred".
"The set of broken expanded to include the build."
Jesus.

We Chrises can never get a break... unless its the build. -_-