Genetics was on the front page of Wikipedia yesterday as Featured Article of the Day! This was pretty cool, but this of course attracted a crop of editors and comments that wanted to improve on the article — some wonderful and knowledgeable, some newbies, some with an ax to grind.

The one that really got to me was the guy who got really upset with usage of the passive voice:

“With all due respect, I find the drenching of this article in passive voice to be sophomoric and cumbersome. I intend to re-edit the entire article and make it readable to a literate audience, as I believe that Wikipedia articles should be written in a dynamic manner. Should you chose to remove all of my edits, I will seek redress.”

My reply:

“Please don’t get too passive aggressive with me: [1].” …. “I was concerned that your attempt to remove the passive voice made the article harder to read by introducing unnecessary vocabulary. If you can do it in a cleaner manner then you are welcome to it.” …. “While it is hardly arduous for me to comprehend your verbiage, I would importune you to contemplate first the lucidity of your emendations before foisting them upon a somewhat less literate audience.”

That link I made there is worth reading, it’s to a Language Log post “Passive Aggression” that illustrates the fallacy of an absolute injunction against the passive voice.

And so I tend to ignore the injunction, although I do appreciate that it can generally improve readability. But if removing the passive voice from a sentence requires introducing more complicated vocabulary, I think it is actually reducing the clarity of the sentence. Some examples of changes this editor made…

• “For genes that are closer together” was replaced with “For genes located in closer proximity“
• “DNA (rather than protein) was the genetic material of the viruses” was replaced with “DNA (rather than protein) comprised the genetic material of the viruses”
• “A popular theory during Mendel’s time was the concept of blending inheritance” was replaced with “A popular theory during Mendel’s time pertained to the concept of blending inheritance” (the theory was only related to the concept? This one isn’t even correct. I’m not even sure it’s passive??)

I’m really not a writing expert, but I think the article needs to be as accessible as possible — in these cases, the passive voice is preferable to doing some grammatical backflips over fancy vocabulary. Make sure to read that Language Log post, it’s very funny!

Ethan Zuckerman has a couple of recent posts about Darfur and Tibet, I found both very good to read. “China, bias, and misunderstanding” is about the disconnect between Chinese and Western perceptions of Tibet — for example, how and why many Chinese were upset and offended by the Olympic torch protests. “Media, reality, representation: what are we paying attention to when we pay attention to Darfur?” explores the oversimplification made of the Darfur conflict — it’s much more complex than I’ve been led to believe! — and he hypothesizes why this particular conflict has become such a popular cause for activism.

Bunnie’s latest blog post is interesting — I was fooled as he was. It teaches me that small improvements on the worst mileage cars is more effective than improving the mileage on cars that are already moderately efficient. I recommend it to anyone interested in the general issue of reducing gas consumption.

Here is a short list of some cool words. If you have a cool word, add it with a comment (make say what it means and why it is cool)!

crapulent / crapulence

• definition: sick due to excessive eating or alcohol, excessively drunk
• why it’s cool: this should be obvious

pulchritude

• definition: beauty
• why it’s cool: ugliest word for beauty I’ve ever heard

chaotropic

• definition: disrupts the structure of proteins and/or DNA, denaturing them
• why it’s cool: sounds bad ass

UPDATE 7/8:

callipygian

• definition: having well-shaped buttocks
• why it’s cool: fancy-ass ass-fancy