Well, it sounds like one of those guidelines that's wrong as stated, mangled for simplicity to the point of meaninglessness. Just as "was" only sometimes means passive voice, "had" only sometimes means passive voice. Passive Voice: The house was bought by Joe. Not Passive Voice: The house was blue with green trim. Passive Voice: The house had been bought by Joe. Not Passive Voice: The house had been blue with green trim. Not Passive Voice: The house had blue shutters and green trim. Passive Voice: The chicken had been eaten by Joe. Not Passive Voice: Joe had been eating the chicken. Not Passive Voice: Joe had eaten the chicken. Not Passive Voice: Joe had two quarters and a dime. Not Passive Voice: Jane had some chicken, and Joe had some lasagna. Not Passive Voice: Joe had red hair. Not Passive Voice: Joe had run to the house. Edited to add: Now, this is all addressing the very clearly defined concept of passive voice, as opposed to what I see as the fuzzy, nonspecific accusation of "passive writing". If it's not as fuzzy and undefined as I think it is, I'd be delighted to learn a crisp, clean definition. ChickenFreak
I've always wondered this myself, and any Internet search I made always turned up bupkes. Are we talking strictly verbs or verbs that have become gerunds, adjectives, etc.? I understand why in the case of verbs (the "to be" idea), but I never came up with any other reason.
-ing words are called particples. What is frowned upon is overuse of them, and that overuse is far too common. Used with restraint, they have a solid place in writing.
I once read an article, written by a quite a few different successful authors, where they gave writing tips. They contradicted each other and themselves so many times that I just picked my favourites.
I was preparing to post this too ^. I think the goal here with all writing techniques and wordings is the effect they have on the text/reader in context. These "rules" are made up because in most situations violating the rule has a negative effect on the text and therefore the reader, whether it makes the text repetitive, slow, breaks up the passage of time, etc, etc. Knowing the rule means you can recognise where the rule applies, and therefore recognise where the rule does not apply much more easily, for example if you deliberately want your text to be repetitive, slow, or whatever. Rather than simply telling the rule, it would be much more beneficial for teachers to explain exactly what effect sticking to a particular rule will have on a passage of text and what effect not sticking to it would have in full. From there the student can use the rule much more confidently and know when exceptions arise and when it's appropriate to violate the rule. It also helps you avoid bogus rules if you can see for yourself that its use is having a bad effect on text. I remember when I was young being told to never start a sentence with "and" because it was poor writing. However I find that occasionally it can be used to good effect, for example if a character is exasperated and is blurting out a lot of words together with a lot of actions. (Having said that I still don't actually know why to avoid "and" at the start of a sentence )
Funny how it works that way. Part of the problem is the tendency to dumb down thoughtful guidelines about "how often" into hard and fast rules of "don't", and to take what has recently successful in the marketplace and turn it into a template for the only thing that is acceptable. Newbie writers seem particularly prone to this kind of thinking, which makes sense because of our desire to obtain success in a difficult and crowded field. I'm also always a little wary when students come on and say, "my prof said this" and then others come along and denounce it. What is presented by the student is usually a quick summary of what (s)he took down in class notes, which was a summary of what was said in the lecture. That is, it's a distillation of a distillation, which leaves an awful lot of material cast aside, material that no doubt provided context, examples, qualifiers and exceptions. I appreciate the OP's desire to share what (s)he learned in class, and it's a nice starting point to discuss aspects of writing. But turning it into a critique of the professor's statements is pointless.
Thanks for that, I got tired of the insults. He's experienced and qualified and I trust him, I really do. Looks like I took his advice too seriously. I'm sure he would be the first to say there are exceptions.
It's because "and" is a conjunction, the purpose of which is to join two things together. Grammarians in (I think) the 19th century decided that it wasn't logical to start a sentence with a conjunction because there was nothing before it to be joined, so they told people to stop doing it. The logic was wrong (the missing bit has simply been elided) but the "rule" stuck.
This. Imagine reading Harry Potter without an -ing or a to be. Just... just no. It would be bad. If I followed the rules of writing strictly, I would probably end up with something that looked suspiciously like a cross between a cross-site Java scripting with XML logistics and KLT network management guide book and a non fiction text, but with the word "dragon" thrown in a few times for fun.
I occasionally start a sentence with a conjunction such as "and" or "but". I remember being told to guard against this sort of thing as long ago as primary school. But (sorry) sometimes I feel it is justified. Splitting a sentence in two with a full stop and a conjunction stops a sentence from becoming overwhemingly long. And (sorry again) so many other novelists do it.
I try to be aware of "rules" and utilize them as guidelines rather than any kind of substantive restrictions on writing. And I start a sentence with a conjunction if I feel like it.
The King James version of the Bible has lots of sentences beginning with conjunctions. If it's good enough for God, it's good enough for me
