2

English is my second language and I largely depend on Grammarly for checking grammatical mistakes.

To create a new app, first, make sure your current working directory is same as where manage.py file is located. After that execute the following command.

I don't see any problem with this sentence, but Grammarly alerts me about "Passive Voice Misuse".

Please tell me is there any problem with this sentence.

Jose
  • 121
  • '...directory is the same as that in which is the manage.py file.' – Nigel J May 21 '18 at 12:23
  • @NigelJ does it should odd? – Jose May 21 '18 at 12:25
  • 1
    Apart from adding "the" before "same" "manage.py", this seems perfectly OK to me. I don't know about Grammarly, but many grammar checkers will warn about any use of the passive (because they aren't very clever). –  May 21 '18 at 12:44
  • I wouldn't put the comma after "first" (and I tend to use too many commas!) –  May 21 '18 at 12:47
  • 5
    It's wrongly identifying 'is located' here as a passive construction. Contrast 'The kitchen window was broken, we discovered when we arrived at the cottage.' and 'The kitchen window was broken by the golf-ball.' Only the second sentence uses the passive. – Edwin Ashworth May 21 '18 at 13:04
  • @EdwinAshworth I agree that "is located" is not passive (because locate is intransitive), but isn't "was broken" passive in both your examples? –  May 21 '18 at 13:27
  • 1
    Wouldn’t it be better to say: “make sure your manage.py file is located in your current working directory”? More concise and much clearer to my mind. – Daniel Harbour May 21 '18 at 14:21
  • @James Random No. 'Broken' is regarded as a fully-fledged adjective here; 'We saw that one window was broken, but the other was intact'. – Edwin Ashworth May 21 '18 at 19:28
  • @EdwinAshworth Geoff Pullum uses "City Hall was damaged [by storms]" as an example of passive voice in this article: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922 That seems to be equivalent to the "was broken" use. (But maybe it can be reasonably interpreted as either an adjective or a passive phrase.) –  May 21 '18 at 19:35
  • @James Random You're missing the point. There are two 'was broken' usages here. 'Although the pantry window was intact, the kitchen window was broken, we discovered when we arrived at the cottage.' [predicate adjectives] and 'The kitchen window was broken by the golf-ball.' [passive construction]. This article (from Grammarly, I think) endorses this analysis. – Edwin Ashworth May 21 '18 at 22:43
  • @EdwinAshworth I do see your point. But it (the difference in interpretation/analysis) still seems ambiguous or slightly arbitrary. The first example could equally well say, "The window was broken by the golf ball, we discovered when we arrived at the cottage." It seems odd to me (I have had little formal study of English grammar) that adding the agent (by the golf ball) changes the phrase "was broken" from an adjective to a passive construction. But it is probably inappropriate to continue this in the comments... –  May 21 '18 at 23:03
  • @James Random 'The window was broken' is indeterminate. It has two distinct meanings. (a) The passive transformation (minus a by-phrase) of 'Someone or something broke the window': speaking of a punctive act by a sentient or non-sentient agent. And (b) a paraphrase of 'The window was in a state of disrepair': speaking of the state of the window. Compare 'The window was beautiful'. Now obviously someone made the beautiful window, but the 'present' condition, not the manufacturing act/process, is being referenced by 'beautiful'. Similarly for the predicative adjective 'broken' = 'fragmentary'. – Edwin Ashworth May 22 '18 at 09:51
  • Another related example of ambiguity (these are well known) is 'Flying planes can be dangerous.' I think Chomsky pointed this one out. It's indeterminate, but 'Flying planes can be dangerous, though the ones on the ground tend to be a lot safer' and 'Flying planes can be dangerous, even for pilots with over twenty years' experience' clearly indicate the adjectival and verbal usages respectively. – Edwin Ashworth May 22 '18 at 09:59
  • @EdwinAshworth That clarifies it perfectly. So syntax alone isn't always enough to identify a passive clause. –  May 22 '18 at 09:59
  • Sadly for Grammarly, no. – Edwin Ashworth May 22 '18 at 10:02
  • I think Grammarly is just warning you that it's about to misuse the passive voice. – Hot Licks Jul 03 '18 at 01:53
  • 2
    Any grammar checker you can use for free is worth what it costs. And plenty of ones that cost money are made to please Miss Fidditch or the Chicago Manual of Style rather than the writer of English sentences. BTW, there is no such thing as a "Passive Voice Misuse". Notice they didn't tell you what the "misuse" was? That's because it's bullshit. – John Lawler Jul 03 '18 at 04:15
  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking for help with a software bug. – tchrist Aug 12 '18 at 18:03

1 Answers1

-1

To create a new app, first make sure your current working directory is the same as where the manage.py file is located. After that**,** execute the following command**:**

I suspect Grammarly is treating make sure as passive. Be more direct:

Set your current working directory to the directory where manage.py is located and then execute the following command:

A technical documentation editor would either make this change or send it back and tell you to make it.

swmcdonnell
  • 877
  • 3
    This answer seems to assume that writers have some kind of obligation to appease Grammarly. Given that Grammarly is in this case obviously mistaken, isn’t the only reasonable thing to simply ignore it? – jsw29 Jun 28 '18 at 16:53
  • I think Grammarly is right. The solution I provided starts with a real action verb. – swmcdonnell Jun 28 '18 at 20:28
  • 2
    No, I bet it thinks is located is "passive" simply because it contains be and a past participle. And then it bitches because it is under the delusion that all passive is "abuse". It it, in short, an idiot of a program. Don't appease a program whose very name is ungrammatical. There's nothing about the passive which is "abusive" and there's nothing about the sentence that needs recasting. Just turn the idiot program off. – tchrist Jul 03 '18 at 02:16