A Little of This, a Little of That

We're off to California this week to see my nephew Casey married. We'll have four days in the California Wine Country/Russian River area.

Now for a writing concern...

There seems to be some confusion among writing conference presenters (not singling out anyone specific) regarding active/passive voice and transitive/intransitive verbs. The opposite of an active (action?) verb is not a passive verb.

Voice has to do with where the action of the verb is directed. An active sentence is John hit the ball. A passive sentence is The ball was hit by John.

Verbs are either transitive or intransitive. Transitive means action. Both the sentences above use transitive verbs. Intransitive refers to verbs of being. Mary enjoyed the ball game. This sentence is in active voice, but uses an intransitive verb.

I just grit my teeth at conferences when presenters say, "Use action verbs, not passive ones." That's like saying "Eat Granny Smith apples, not Valencia oranges."

There's my ranting for the day/week/month...

Apologies for the dearth of posts. I've been very busy with Spinetinglers work, and working nights still gets everything topsy-turvey. Of course, if I were working full time days, I'd have just as little time and energy for other activities.