#442

Drugs, weapons and mobile phones are among the items snuck into jails, says the Observer.

BBC News Online, September 2, 2018

‘Snuck’ is an American way of saying ‘sneaked’ and I find it a very ugly word.  In any case I think it exists only in the active voice, eg ‘the man snuck into the garage’, not the passive voice which is used here. Really, ‘snuck’ should be avoided in every possible circumstance.

This is my entry on active and passive voices from Style Matters:

The active voice is for someone or something doing something. The passive voice is for something being done to someone or something. For example, ‘he shears/sheared the sheep’, but ‘the sheep was shorn’; ‘he mows/mowed the lawn’, but ‘the lawn has been mown’; ‘the torpedo sank the ship’, but ‘the ship was sunk by a torpedo’. It is a common error to say ‘the torpedo sunk the ship’.

 

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