News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Hemingway Editor. Parent comment

Re:Hemingway Editor by Kluny on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @03:16PM (#25129162)
Passive voice is actually essential sometimes - for instance when you're editing someone's work or reviewing their code.

"X can be changed to y" comes across a lot softer than "you should change x to y", and is likely to get better results.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Hemingway Editor by dragonwriter on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @04:59PM (#25130504)
What works even better is, “To avoid <problem>, consider Y instead of X”. Passive voice tries to mitigate the impact of the problem of “arbitrary direction” rather than resolving the problem.
[ Parent | on HN ]