There is too much passive voice in this article. I’ve submitted a small edit, changing one or two sentences.
I think that it would improve the article if someone combed through the whole thing to draw out specific subjects from the sources and write the sentences to use the active voice.
> “After author and journalist Toby Young was appointed to the new body, a petition to remove him received more than 220,000 signatures. Comments and tweets from his past were uncovered, and a subsequent report found that his appointment had been a result of political interference. Young resigned.”
Hi Reed: I notice that in addition to the passive voice comments in your suggested edits, you’ve also made editorial additions, including the assertion that Tom Slater is a “member of the Revolutionary Communist Party.” I wonder if you have any supporting link or other evidence for this statement? In the context of an article such as this, the insertion of this type of background information could well be viewed as inflammatory (if not defamatory), particularly if unsupported, outdated or inaccurate. I’m aware of Spiked’s Leninst background as a publication, but I don’t believe this automatically confers RCP status on everyone who writes for it. I’ve done some online research and have been unable to confirm Slater’s membership in the Revolutionary Communist Party. Thanks for any clarity you can bring to this.
I did try to retain the original hyperlinks (I just copied and pasted), but perhaps this threw something off? In any case, please delete such changes that show up in the diff and prefer whatever the original article showed.
To be clear, the only changes that I made (or at least intended to make) were word order and choice, not any content changes.
I have made some but not all the suggestions you proposed and also corrected a spelling error on Yiannopolis.
It is a journalistic convention to use past tense — not passive I’d argue — in some of the cases here when outside quotes. +He was it was a pity she was so hideous+. I can only find the Slater reference in publications at least as obscure as Spiked. Is it relevant?
> “The six currently on the list are: far-right, nationalist groups the British National Party (BNP), English Defence League (EDL), and National Action, and Islamist groups Al-Muhajiroun, Hizb-ut-Tahir, and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee.”
– “nationalist groups the British National Party (BNP)”: Nationalist groups such as the British Nation Party? I’m not sure if that’s what the author intended to say.
– “and National Action”: Probably just remove “and” from this one.
Not sure I agree on this one: she’s grouping nationalist and Islamic groups and being deliberately precise about which ones are restricted.
Perfectly valid points on passive voice. I suspect one could argue features can be softer in voice than hard news.
Fair enough. I find something confusing about “nationalist groups the British National Party (BNP)”. It feels like it needs a preposition or something to link “nationalist groups” and “the BNP”. I leave it to you, though. Thanks for your work and care.
The Office for Students is reffered to as a UK organisation, however it will only have juristiction in England.
There is too much passive voice in this article. I’ve submitted a small edit, changing one or two sentences.
I think that it would improve the article if someone combed through the whole thing to draw out specific subjects from the sources and write the sentences to use the active voice.
This sentence is a good example:
> “After author and journalist Toby Young was appointed to the new body, a petition to remove him received more than 220,000 signatures. Comments and tweets from his past were uncovered, and a subsequent report found that his appointment had been a result of political interference. Young resigned.”
Hi Reed: I notice that in addition to the passive voice comments in your suggested edits, you’ve also made editorial additions, including the assertion that Tom Slater is a “member of the Revolutionary Communist Party.” I wonder if you have any supporting link or other evidence for this statement? In the context of an article such as this, the insertion of this type of background information could well be viewed as inflammatory (if not defamatory), particularly if unsupported, outdated or inaccurate. I’m aware of Spiked’s Leninst background as a publication, but I don’t believe this automatically confers RCP status on everyone who writes for it. I’ve done some online research and have been unable to confirm Slater’s membership in the Revolutionary Communist Party. Thanks for any clarity you can bring to this.
I did try to retain the original hyperlinks (I just copied and pasted), but perhaps this threw something off? In any case, please delete such changes that show up in the diff and prefer whatever the original article showed.
To be clear, the only changes that I made (or at least intended to make) were word order and choice, not any content changes.
I have made some but not all the suggestions you proposed and also corrected a spelling error on Yiannopolis.
It is a journalistic convention to use past tense — not passive I’d argue — in some of the cases here when outside quotes. +He was it was a pity she was so hideous+. I can only find the Slater reference in publications at least as obscure as Spiked. Is it relevant?
The wording of this list needs to be tightened:
> “The six currently on the list are: far-right, nationalist groups the British National Party (BNP), English Defence League (EDL), and National Action, and Islamist groups Al-Muhajiroun, Hizb-ut-Tahir, and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee.”
– “nationalist groups the British National Party (BNP)”: Nationalist groups such as the British Nation Party? I’m not sure if that’s what the author intended to say.
– “and National Action”: Probably just remove “and” from this one.
Not sure I agree on this one: she’s grouping nationalist and Islamic groups and being deliberately precise about which ones are restricted.
Perfectly valid points on passive voice. I suspect one could argue features can be softer in voice than hard news.
Fair enough. I find something confusing about “nationalist groups the British National Party (BNP)”. It feels like it needs a preposition or something to link “nationalist groups” and “the BNP”. I leave it to you, though. Thanks for your work and care.