How ‘Your Package Has Been Delivered’ and other Automated Messages Erase Essential Human Labor

How ‘Your Package Has Been Delivered’ and other Automated Messages Erase Essential Human Labor

Few aspects of the English language are so thoroughly maligned as the passive voice. And for good reason. The passive (“mistakes were made”) as opposed to the active (“I made mistakes”) permits wriggly writing. It acknowledges that something happened without explaining who made it happen or how. As such, the passive voice isn’t just the hallmark of sloppy prose; it’s a rhetorical device that evades recognition, dispenses with attribution and, according to one style guide , “liquidates and buries the active individual.”

Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that at a time when major e-commerce platforms and app-based delivery services are brazenly […]

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