The passive voice is being discussed over here by Mark Liberman. Personally, I've always been told that the passive voice should not be used in writing, at least where it can be avoided, for precisely the reasons described (in a rather negative light, it should be noted) by Mark. Of course, I probably haven't been deterred from its use altogether, and truth be told, when I'm confronted by those green squigglies underneath my sentences in Microsoft Word, I'm usually a little excited by the notion that a line has been crossed, and the possibility that some frothing grammarian somewhere will be offended by what's been written!
Unfortunately, this feeling of thrilling transgression has been somewhat neutralized now by Mark's convincing argument that such rules shouldn't even be applied in the first place. But perhaps you won't be so easily convinced as I?
This kind of thing must be hard-wired into your style before you're ever told what passive voice is. Once a conscious effort is made to avoid it, your writing might be considered clunky at times even though active voice is used, as has been recommended.
Just writing that made my temples hot.
I'm always inspired by clunkiness...
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