Preaching against passive voice--passively

Verbatim text from a writing guide. Directly before the recommendation to avoid the passive voice, there are nine style pointers. Six are in the passive voice, and a seventh is perhaps a "whiz" deletion that is passive (in bold):

Numbers
Spell out all numbers from one to nine, except in the cases of percentages and references to report chapters, sections or exhibits, which are generally rendered numerically.

Addresses also are rendered as numbers, unless the number is part of a building's formal name.

Numbers that begin a sentence are spelled out.

Never use the percentage symbol in text.

All numbers featuring decimals should be rounded to a single place.

Decimal numbers less than one are preceded by a zero.

Fractions of a dollar are written as cents.

In text references to numbers of a million or more, use the words "million" or "billion" rather than writing the entire number out.

Omit unnecessary zeros. Never use the word "dollars" with a dollar sign. Thousands take a comma unless they represent years or numbers attached to legislation.


Passive voice
Avoid it.

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