We were teaching a class for Department of Interior personnel—mostly managers. Like lots of people, they’d heard about the evils of passive-voice sentences. Our goal was to make sure they understood the difference between active and passive voice, and recognized that each has its place.

After a short explanation, we moved on to examples. Passive-voice sentences can sometimes be strong and clear, so we talked about a couple of those. And as usual, we discussed some sentences that show why the passive voice has a bad reputation.

Then it was their turn to identify several new sentences as active or passive.

In some of these sentences, the person taking action concealed his identity by hiding behind the passive voice. Sentences like “Your loan application has been disapproved,” and “Your manuscript is hereby rejected.”

When we showed the class one particularly sneaky sentence, and asked for a volunteer to identify it as active or passive, a young man raised his hand.

“Yes?” I said, “which is it?”

“That sentence,” he said, “isn’t passive, and it isn’t active. What it is, is passive-aggressive.”

We all laughed, and agreed with him.

And so a new voice is heard from—and about.