That's nonsense. From your comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44493308, and from the fact that you used the passive voice in your comment ("they should be avoided") apparently without noticing, it appears that the reason you have this opinion is that you don't know what the passive voice is in the first place.

That doesn't make sense. It's like saying that the best general advice about which way to turn when you're driving is to turn right. From your comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44493308, and from the fact that you used the passive voice in your comment ("they should be avoided") apparently without noticing, it appears that the reason you have this opinion is that you don't know what the passive voice is in the first place.

> the best general advice about which way to turn

At the risk of derailing into insane pedantry land, this part is kinda true, so maybe not the best analogy?

From routing efficiency: https://www.ge.com/news/reports/ups-drivers-dont-turn-left-p...

And also safety: https://www.phly.com/rms/blog/turning-left-at-an-intersectio...

If you always turn right at every intersection, you will just go around and around the same block. Which way you should turn depends on where you want to go.

You didn’t originally say anything about always turning right at every intersection and neither did the GP. I had the same two thoughts as GP when I read your analogy.

No. That is what roundabouts, curved roads etc are for. Left turns are generally more problematic due to crossing incoming traffic etc.. Hence planning avoids them for good reason and there are much more right turns.

Right (ha), but that's kinda how one can approach passive voice too?

If you never use passive voice, you will be unable to emphasize the object of the sentence in cases where it might actually be necessary, and end up requiring more words to get the same effect.

If you never make left turns, you end up having to go past one block and make three right turns.

So even though best practices might be to avoid passive language for various reasons, sometimes it is cleaner. And even though best practices are to avoid left turns (for efficiency, safety, etc), sometimes it's worth it to just take the left turn. So even UPS trucks will make left turns, just not nearly as often.

Well, I do think you should make right turns more often than left turns (in countries that drive on the right), and you should use the active voice more often than the passive voice, say three to ten times more often. But that's very different from the advice to only ever make right turns or to only ever use the passive voice.

Which way you should turn depends on where you are trying to go; which voice you should use depends on what you are trying to say, who your audience is, what you want to emphasize, and so on.

I cherish your pedantry. If not here, where?

I can’t find it, but I remember reading an article a year or two ago with an analysis showing some of the most vocal critics of the passive voice used the passive voice more often than most of their contemporary writers.

Probably http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003366.h..., giving specific statistics on Orwell and on Strunk & White, linked from https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922.

Thank you!

Happy to help!

I'm extremely critical of how people use hyphens. Partly because I'm a heavy hyphen-user myself!