{"id":5631,"date":"2017-10-05T09:10:25","date_gmt":"2017-10-05T07:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5631"},"modified":"2017-10-05T09:16:47","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T07:16:47","slug":"more-awful-advice-from-oliver-kamm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/5631\/","title":{"rendered":"More awful advice from Oliver Kamm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve written before about the terrible advice <em>Times<\/em>\u00a0columnist Oliver Kamm dishes out on Twitter. Here&#8217;s another example:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Whoever has told not to use the passive voice doesn&#8217;t know what they&#8217;re talking about. They should be ignored.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Oliver Kamm (@OliverKamm) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OliverKamm\/status\/915709716554231810?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 4, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>To which his\u00a0interlocutor says:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">It&#8217;s generally a rule in most scientific writing in which I&#8217;ve had instruction or reviewer comments. Passive voice is received poorly.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Dalton Ludwick (@EntoLudwick) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EntoLudwick\/status\/915710813670903808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 4, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Now I have no idea whether use of the passive voice is a good idea or not, and couldn&#8217;t even define what the passive voice is. What I do know is that writing can be both good and bad, and styles vary depending on the format of the piece and the subject. Contracts, for example, ought to be written in a different style from a romance novel. Does the passive voice suit every format? I don&#8217;t know, but one would suppose the people involved in writing and reading scientific articles have some sort of basis for their preference other than pure grammatical snobbery.<\/p>\n<p>Kamm dismisses it of course, and doesn&#8217;t actually respond to Mr Ludwick &#8211; as is his wont. However, someone else he asked does:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">As an editor, I expect papers to be in active voice. Most sentences with passive voice read and sound horrible and it&#8217;s not necessary.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Terry McGlynn ???????? (@hormiga) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hormiga\/status\/915712884230971392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 4, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>So whose advice does one take on how to write scientific articles? A <em>Times<\/em> columnist who probably wouldn&#8217;t understand three-quarters of the terms therein, or an editor of scientific articles?<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what I find so pompous about Kamm. He&#8217;s a good writer &#8211; but only in one or two particular formats. I&#8217;m certain he&#8217;s never written a scientific paper, yet here he is dispensing advice which would put anyone following it on the wrong side of their editor.\u00a0 To my knowledge he&#8217;s never written a novel either, and I suspect if he tried it would contain leaden prose that would make Lloyds Law Reports read like a James Bond. Anyone with a modicum of self-awareness might think <em>&#8220;Wait a minute, this guy is writing for a very different clientele than I am, and perhaps there are good reasons why they don&#8217;t like the passive voice,&#8221;<\/em> but no, it&#8217;s an airy <em>&#8220;they don&#8217;t know what they&#8217;re talking about and should be ignored&#8221;<\/em>. Now I&#8217;d have thought writing as per your clients&#8217; or readers&#8217; stated preferences was quite important, but apparently not according to Kamm.<\/p>\n<p>I think I know what&#8217;s happened here. Back in the mid-00s Kamm wrote some decent political and historical articles on his blog, written to a very high standard. He was quickly drafted into the <em>Times<\/em> despite having no experience in journalism, but if you consider his <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oliver_Kamm#Early_life\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">family connections<\/a> it comes as no surprise how he pulled that off. Kamm was a loud proponent of Blair&#8217;s foreign policy, particularly the &#8220;ethical interventionism&#8221; used to justify the Iraq War, even writing a book called <em>The Left-Wing Case for a Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy<\/em>. One could see back then why a metropolitan paper might want to get him on board, but since then Blairism and the neo-con foreign policy has been utterly discredited. However, Kamm never repented, sticking to his guns in supporting Blair &#8211; which he does to this day. This probably gave his employer a bit of a headache: is there really a job for a columnist who drones on about how great Blair&#8217;s foreign policies were? Not really. But they couldn&#8217;t boot him because that&#8217;s not how things work, especially with his family connections. So instead he got shoved in a corner to write about grammar and writing styles. That&#8217;s how we get gems like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">So am I but you should ignore Orwell&#8217;s Politics &amp; the English Language: it&#8217;s as dishonest &amp; misguided as the stuff he&#8217;s attacking.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Oliver Kamm (@OliverKamm) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OliverKamm\/status\/915716226298601473?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 4, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Basically, aspiring writers should ignore all advice except that dispensed by Oliver Kamm. Some humility wouldn&#8217;t go amiss, would it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve written before about the terrible advice Times\u00a0columnist Oliver Kamm dishes out on Twitter. Here&#8217;s another example: Whoever has told not to use the passive voice doesn&#8217;t know what they&#8217;re talking about. They should be ignored. \u2014 Oliver Kamm (@OliverKamm) &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/5631\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5631"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5631"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5636,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5631\/revisions\/5636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}