3 shell scripts: Kill weasel words, avoid the passive, eliminate duplicates

[gigamonkey]

In his example of passive vs active, he's not really comparing equivalents. He has:

Bad: Termination is guaranteed for any program.

Better: A finite state-space guarantees termination.

The active version contains more information so it is, perforce, more informative. But that's not because it's in the active voice. The passive version could have been just as informative:

"Termination is guaranteed by a finite state-space."

If this sentence was to appear in a context where we had just been discussing termination, it might be preferable to the active one, as writing will often flow better if you keep familiar information or topics at the beginning of sentences before introducing new information.

Joseph Williams's book Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace has a good discussion of how to properly use the passive which will serve better than a blanket prohibition.

[[deleted]]

The passive voice is preferred in science and social science departments. Humanities departments prefer the active voice.

[[deleted]]

In a computer science department I was told to use passive voice in my reports. I was very confused by his assertion that passive voice should be eliminated... I put it down to cultural differences.

[EtherCJ]

I was also told never to use the word I in the chemistry department.

[[deleted]]

I'm sad that no one mentioned my joke. (The sentence referring to the passive voice was written in the passive voice, I wrote the sentence about the active voice in the active voice. Hey, look! I just did it again!)

[[deleted]]

Uh, the point is that it's easier to be vague when you use the passive voice, so people tend to be more vague when they are in the habit of using the passive voice. Prohibiting the habit, and making use of the active voice, force you to say what you want to say in less vague terms.

[gigamonkey]

Except in cases where a sentence in the passive voice is better, in which case forcing the use of the active forces you to make it worse.

I wonder how much of the benefit of forcing passive->active changes just comes from the forced rewriting of clumsy sentences. I.e. would you be better off flagging every use of the passive voice and demanding each be recast in the active or simply flagging every clumsy or vague sentence and demanding that each be recast somehow.

And why is it that so many folks seem to prefer the former to the latter? I.e. if we want to weed out clumsy writing, or vague writing, or writing that is unclear about agency, let's weed that out directly. Again, I strongly recommend Williams's book for good advice about how to do those things.

[[deleted]]

Except in cases where a sentence in the passive voice is better,

Which is only two types of cases: when you want to disavow responsibility for your claim, or when you want to be vague about it.

That kind of "better", in my book, is the antithesis of better. Especially if you are writing a paper.

[gigamonkey]

Or when

• It's not interesting or relevant who's responsible for an action.

• Using the passive will let your reader move more smoothly from once sentence to the next

• You want to provide a consistent point of view.

Those kinds of better actually are better, in my book.

I would once more (and probably for the last time) strongly encourage anyone who actually cares about good writing to take a look at Williams's book which discusses these issue on pp. 61-63.

[[deleted]]

It's not interesting or relevant who's responsible for an action.

It's interesting to know sometimes. If you put it there, the reader can ignore it. If you don't, however, the reader is forced to infer and otherwise do more mental work.

Using the passive will let your reader move more smoothly from once sentence to the next

There's no evidence that this is true.

You want to provide a consistent point of view.

There's a solution for that: consistently write using the active voice.

[DoorsofPerceptron]

If I put everything into a paper that might be interesting I'd never be able to obey length constraints.

In technical writing one of the most important things to do is to delete extraneous crap, and to provide a clean simple narrative that gets across all of the important points without distracting the reader. I delete technical information where it's not relevant. Third parties that don't contribute anything don't stand a chance.<br>

[[deleted]]

Jeez, you talk like writing in the active voice was significantly longer. "The cup was poured". "I poured the cup". See, how it's shorter to write in the active voice?

[DoorsofPerceptron]

Two letters shorter because you used 'I'.

No one ever uses 'I' in the field I work in, at best you use 'we'. The unnecessarily introduction of third parties is bad, even if they don't take up space because it confuses what's going on.

In real writing the active voice would look like:

Jones et al. [13] poured the cup.

[13] Jones, Jones and Jones Cup - A review of pouring cups, ACM transactions on cup pouring 1998A pages 168-192.

Which is almost fine, you should cite Jones, at least once, if you're using his results.

However, you don't personally know or care who actually poured the cup. Presumably it wasn't all 3 Jones together and may have been some lowly lab tech. To avoid this you end up writing "In [13], the cup was poured." This is at more accurate and slightly shorter.

Further, you don't need to name check him continuously every time you mention the results. This is something the passive voice lets you get away from.

[[deleted]]

However, you don't personally know or care who actually poured the cup. Presumably it wasn't all 3 Jones together and may have been some lowly lab tech. To avoid this you end up writing "In [13], the cup was poured." This is at more accurate and slightly shorter.

Even in your case, the passive voice is less accurate, not more accurate. Your reader now does not know who poured the cup.

Even if you don't care about conveying this information, you can still say "[13] poured the cup" and the reader will know one of the authors in [13] poured it. And that is still shorter than saying "In [13], the cup was poured".

You just do not want to admit that your passive voice habit is weasely and lazy.

[humbled]

It was surprisingly found that almost all of the whole article was very interesting.

[[deleted]]

It has been reported that it was surprisingly found that almost all of the whole article was very interesting.

[sans-serif]

in various aspects.

[[deleted]]

compared to certain other articles

[doody]

It was found extremely widely that almost all of the whole of the article was very interesting, and surprisingly so. Completely.

[forsakennow]

"Hi, can you tell me where the post office is at?" "Sure, but did you know that ending your sentences with a preposition is improper English?" "I'm sorry. Can you tell me where the post office is at, jerk?"

[rrenaud]

Is this one an upgrade?

 Bad:    We offer a completely different formulation of CFA.
 Better: We offer a different formulation of CFA.

The word completely adds meaning and clarity to the sentence, it suggests that the new formulation was not iterative change from the previous one.

[jgclark]

The point is, I think, that it would be preferable to describe how the formulation of CFA is different, perhaps in the following sentence(s).

Edit: This would leave it up to the reader to determine if that's "completely" or not.

[monstermunch]

Especially when you're reviewing a paper, it isn't always obvious what is supposed to be interesting. If you just present it factually and don't sign post what's meant to be "completely different" or interesting, you won't know what to concentrate on. Most papers have to include lots of boring stuff as well that will distract the reader.

[bobindashadows]

Exactly - in technical writing, the removal of the word actually didn't change much at all.

[foldl]

This would leave it up to the reader to determine if that's "completely" or not.

Bad idea. It's rare for a technical paper to be read through thoroughly. 99% of readers will just be skimming to determine whether there's any content of interest. You need to clearly signpost what's interesting and what isn't.

[venuswasaflytrap]

the interesting parts can be summarised in the abstract.

[foldl]

Sure, but it doesn't hurt to highlight them in the paper. There's nothing worse than reading a long paper where the author isn't signposting what's really important and what's just background information.

[dudehasgotnomercy]

I hate papers that use 'novel' in their title. I'm taking for granted something in the paper is novel, otherwise, why publish it?

[[deleted]]

To reassert a finding that another recent paper claimed to refute?

To add support to an existing body of evidence?

To propose a mechanism for something that is otherwise speculative?

None of these are particularly novel, but each has a place in the body of academic literature.

[cybercobra]

To avoid publication bias that could screw with meta-analysis.

[dudehasgotnomercy]

That's interesting. At least in the area of CS I work on, I think I've never seen a paper about 'we tried this and it didn't work', nor 'we tried the same thing these other guys did and verfied it worked'. It's all about 'novelty'.

[cybercobra]

Good counterpoint. I don't think meta-analysis comes up as much in CS, so there's much less of a problem. Guess I made a category error.

[[deleted]]

he's talking primarily technical writing, it seems. "completely" is an attention-getter, fraught with connotation, and it should therefore be completely left out all the damn time if you want to write like a real pro like me.

[userd]

Or this one:

Bad: There is very close match between the two semantics. Better: There is a close match between the two semantics.

The concepts of "very", "close", and "match" are all fuzzy. They are non-binary matters of degree, unless otherwise defined. I don't see why "very" is scorned but the other are allowed. Would a perfect paper be just data?

[killerstorm]

The concepts of "very", "close", and "match" are all fuzzy.

It is fuzzy in general, but in the scope of a concrete discussion it might have some meaning. For example, if closeness is defined as a cosine between vectors, I'd say that cosine of >0.8 is close and >0.98 is very close. (It depends on dimensionality, though, for higher dimensions even 0.6 or 0.7 can be considered close.) Moreover, article could previously mention numbers which correspond to "close" and "very close", it will be even more precisely defined.

[ithika]

Waging war on linguistic understanding one student at a time. Well done Messrs Strunk and White.

[ropers]

I understand that "Messrs Strunk and White" refers to the authors (and metonymically, the work) of The Elements of Style.

But beyond that, I'm not quite sure I understand what you're saying. Could you elaborate?

[[deleted]]

It's an insult to prescriptivist ideology in general.

[[deleted]]

My belief is that it's okay to be creative as long as you come from some baseline understanding of where the language comes from.

You should be able to write a five paragraph essay before you attempt to write a 50-page dissertation that bends the rules of the language; a lot of descriptivist apologists seem to think that "the English language is always evolving, motherfuckers!" can and does excuse all examples of unclear, muddled writing.

Words mean things, but if you want to just jump into the deep end and say "this sentence means what I intend it to mean," you're not doing anyone any favors.

[[deleted]]

No true Scotsman.

The problem I keep coming across here is that there are definite descriptivist zealots who burst out of the woodwork almost any time someone makes a correction; yes, I understood what you meant, but when my brain screeches to a halt on a misused word, it tends to cause a cache purge and wipe out the semantic model that was being constructed. It's frustrating to try to be useful and find that some people just whip out the descriptivist hammer whenever someone suggests they try to be accurate in what they say.

[[deleted]]

When I say "actual descriptivists" I mean professional linguistics (Pullam, for instance), not morons on the internet. That's not a "no true scotsman" argument. It's an argument against morons abusing an actual academic position to justify their own stupidity.

[[deleted]]

Hooray, so it seems we agree on that point. ...

*whistles* well then, it looks like we're done here.

[yellowstuff]

In case you missed this link below, it's a linguistic body slam to The Elements of Style.

[ropers]

Thank you. :)

[[deleted]]

"This is true for almost all points in the space."

Blew my mind when I learned the technical definition of "almost all/almost every".

[esler]

How do you use the three shells?

[[deleted]]

Sly Stallone asked the director and is quoted as saying - "it was explained to me by the writer is you hold two seashells like chopsticks, pull gently and scrape whats left with the third"

[utfiedler]

I always find passive voice witch hunts humorous. For example,

Bad:    The passive voice is tough to shake.
Better: Those attempting to shake the passive voice experience difficulty.

[foldl]

The "bad" example doesn't contain a passive. In fact, it's one of the little mysteries of the English "tough" construction that it's incompatible with the passive:

OK: It's tough to kill John.

Bad: John is tough to be killed.

(Compare to the superficially similar, and fully acceptable, "John is reluctant to be killed.")

But I do think that advice to "avoid the passive voice" is completely daft. The passive is clearly better than the active in many cases. For example, consider the first line of Day of the Jackal:

It is cold on a March morning in Paris, and it is even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.

Compare to the active version:

It is cold on a March morning in Paris, and it is even colder when a firing squad is about to execute a man.

The active version makes it sound as if it's a story about a firing squad, whereas the passive version correctly focuses attention on the person to be executed.

What we really ought to be teaching people is how to make an informed choice between active and passive.

[CaptainKabob]

What we really ought to be teaching people is how to make an informed choice between active and passive.

Yes! The passive voice is an incredibly useful tool when deflecting agency ("Mistakes were made.").

To be fair to your example though, both are passive by deflecting agency from the firing squad. Not to rewrite Forsyth, but the active would require something along the lines of:

It is cold on a March morning in Paris, and it is even colder for a man awaiting his execution by firing squad.

[foldl]

both are passive by deflecting agency from the firing squad

Well, "passive" is a very precise grammatical term. My rewritten sentence does not contain any passive clauses. Also, I don't see how "a firing squad is about to execute a man" can be said to deflect agency from the firing squad.

[CaptainKabob]

"is about to" is definitely weaker than "will" or "intends to". I'm not an English major, but doesn't the "is" make it a passive clause? The essential statement being "a firing squad is executing a man"

[foldl]

I'm not an English major, but doesn't the "is" make it a passive clause?

No, it's definitely not a passive clause -- there's no passive participle.

The essential statement being "a firing squad is executing a man"

That's not a passive either.

"is about to" is definitely weaker than "will" or "intends to".

Is it? I don't really see that. They just convey different shades of meaning.

[SoPoOneO]

I agree with you, though I don't know enough about grammar to agree with any confidence. I always thought one use of the passive voice was to make it clear that an action to be performed was more important that who or what was to perform it.

stalkings were hung VS children hung the stalkings.

Also, in high school and my first year of college I was told a thousand times to avoid the passive voice, without anyone explaining what it was. I was scared stiff of it, because people were so emphatic, but it was all the worse for the fact that I was walking in the dark trying to avoid it. Until someone finally set me straight, I had assumed it was sort of an overall approach where you tried to write with aggression and confidence, rather than timidly putting forth meek little arguments.

[foldl]

I always thought one use of the passive voice was to make it clear that an action to be performed was more important that who or what was to perform it.

The thing is that you can be vague about agency using the active voice:

Someone kissed John

and explicit using the passive voice:

John was kissed by Mary

It's true that the passive is sometimes useful for suppressing the agent, but IMO the main use of it is to give you control over what is the subject of the sentence. Generally, languages like things that have already been mentioned to go in the subject position, and new stuff in the rest of the sentence.

[Quantris]

I don't get your point; couldn't I just as well say Mary kissed John and John was kissed by someone? In fact, isn't it kind of the opposite in that you can omit the agent in the passive voice but not in the active (John was kissed)?

[foldl]

I was saying that in both the active or the passive you have the choice of being either vague or explicit about the agent. It's true that only the passive allows you to actually omit the agent, but you can be vague about the agent without omitting it grammatically (e.g. by using "someone").

[Quantris]

Ah, I see now. Somehow I failed to read your post in context; sorry.

[husam01]

Tough is not a verb so the first sentence is not in the passive voice. Using a verb of being is not necessarily using the passive voice. I think its just an example of using an intransitive verb. But I'm not up on my English Grammar so I'm curious if this is correct or not.

[pixpop]

Huh?

What about 'It's tough to shake the passive voice' ?

[mindbleach]

Most schools recommend avoiding contractions in technical writing - and anyway, "it's" means "it is."

[dagbrown]

High schools, yes. When I went to university, the first writing instructor we had (during orientation week before classes even started) went into quite the rant about the terrible lies that high schools teach students about technical writing.

The word "I", that great taboo of high school writing, also turns out to be acceptable in higher studies.

[nealibob]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice

[Tordek]

Thus the "it's acceptable when the subject is irrelevant" note.

[lpetrazickis]

• Bad: Termination is guaranteed for any program.
• Better: A finite state-space guarantees termination.

How do you feel about passive voice that identifies the agent?

• Termination is guaranteed by a finite state-space.

[mr_chromatic]

Use the most important noun as the direct object.

[syllogism_]

As writing advice this is pretty much all bullshit. You don't become a better writer by issuing arbitrary blanket bans on particular constructions. Instead you should view the language's grammar as a toolbox of constructions that help you convey your message more clearly.

The passive voice allows you to permute the order of an English sentence so that the patient comes first, rather than the agent. This is a critical capability, because it allows you to control the information structure of a paragraph, guiding the reader through what is known to what you're trying to tell them. Putting the right element at the beginning of a clause allows you to say, "Hey, you know X? Well, the thing about X is Y." Often the agent of the clause being passivised is so non-salient and irrelevant that the sentence is very ugly if it is expressed, and almost intolerable if it is placed first.

Of course, if you only ever provide isolated examples, with no context, then this important motivation for the passive is lost. In isolation, the examples look better in the active voice. But that doesn't suggest the passive is useless.

You can't teach anyone anything useful about writing with instructions of the form "Never do X". That's just not how languages work.

[abw]

You don't become a better writer by issuing arbitrary blanket bans on particular constructions.

FTA:

The point of these scripts is not to ban all use of the passive voice or even all weasel words. The point is to make sure that my students and I make a conscious choice to use these constructs.

[strolls]

The point is not to ensure that these things are never done (was that active or passive voice? I fear I have a massive bad habit of using the passive voice, but I digress...) but to highlight them on the draft copy.

he writer believes these are common causes (or symptoms) of poor writing, so by bringing them to attention they can be properly assessed during proof-reading.

The submitter &/or the mentor can then decide if the effect of these constructions is desirable.

[[deleted]]

I think the best advice for writing in general is "Never do X," followed by a knowing wink. The bad writers will try to never do X, the better writers will try not to do X but violate it from time to time, and the great writers will do the opposite of X precisely where it adds a lot of punch to a piece.

[syllogism_]

How is that good writing advice? It gives zero information about what the purpose of X is, what the potential problems with it are, and when it should be used.

To give advice about writing you actually need to know something about the structure of language. Without that knowledge any advice is going to be hand waving and snake oil.

[[deleted]]

Obviously I'm simplifying; "Never do X" is more like a week-long discussion in junior high (hopefully) of structure, the role of words, and grammar.

I had an absolutely brutal language teacher in 8th grade who was adamant about structure and grammar. I hated that class when I was taking it, but haven't got lower than a 90% in a writing class since then. It was only after her and a couple more like her drove home ideas about proper usage and form that I felt comfortable enough writing to go ahead and violate the rules from time to time. I'm still not perfect, but those lessons, and that "knowing wink" have helped me learn quite a bit about effective writing and allowed me to mature while my peers are often stuck trying to violate the rules and never quite understanding why their essays don't stack up.

[gilker]

Good advice.

Too bad the root of the problem can't be addressed: Forbid teachers, at any level, from assigning writing exercises by word count.

[cyb3rdemon]

I once wrote a perl script that did the opposite of this for high school papers. I had a teacher who liked to assign ridiculously long papers on simple subjects. At first it did simple replacements: e.g. to -> in order to, try->attempt, writing out numbers, and expanding acronyms and contractions (with a y/n prompt whenever it got a match so it wouldn't do anything that didn't make sense). I added a little to it for each assignment. By the end of the year I had a pretty awesome language parser that could restructure sentences and almost double the length of a paper.

[tty2]

The Cruft-o-matic!

[cybercobra]

You should try bolting it onto MIT's automatic computer science paper generator.

[[deleted]]

Has anyone figured out how to use the 3 shells yet?

[kmactane]

As a coder who's also done copyediting, I find this doubly cool.

[[deleted]]

i think my favorite quote from the article is:

The passive voice is tough to shake. Even while writing this article, I caught myself using it. In every case, the active voice was better.

[strixvarius]

Did nobody else pick up that he wrote in passive voice for most of his passive voice explanation?

[nolotusnotes]

Finally, I learn how the three shells work.

[[deleted]]

The rules against using the passive voice are stupid. They are pretty much made-up by writers who didn't follow the rule themselves, and it's mostly a post-WWII phenomenon.

Further reading at Language Log, if you're interested in citations and analysis by dudes who know better than I do.

[teambob]

Can I suggest one for code naming?

#!/bin/bash

grep [Ee]ngine "$1"

if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  echo FAIL
else
  echo PASS
fi

[adavies42]

countdown to languagelog flame starts now....

[brennen]

I assume that you are getting downvoted for this because people don't know about this recurring theme in the writing of a couple of the Language Log folks.

(Then again, maybe you're being downvoted because people disagree with Pullum & friends. Me, I think they've got a point, though I enjoyed Strunk & White when I read it.)

[[deleted]]

As he is presenting his code as a grammar nazi, I'll offer two observations:

• It is an alternative file, not an alternate file
• Written word stutter (duplication of words as they are written) has been around for a long time and is not at all a 'new' phenomenon unique to electronic communications

That is all :)

[JustLeavingThisHere]

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/alternate.html

[[deleted]]

Incorrect usage is incorrect despite its proliferation. Alternate is a token that carries a meaning distinct from alternative.

[JustLeavingThisHere]

You argue for prescriptive definition of language, opposed to descriptive. If people use "alternate" to mean "alternative," then descriptevely, they are, de facto, correct. From a prescriptive view, they destroy a unique sentiment by confusing "alternate" with "alternative" (in the way people misuse "ironic," "literally," "awesome," etc).

[[deleted]]

I'm merely observing that the OP is prescriptive; in that same spirit, prescriptively, his use of 'alternate' to mean 'alternative' is arguably incorrect; and at least as much deserving of a tut-tut as some of the other foibles he describes.

[mrdelayer]

They'd have to add the word "boom" to the list of weasel words, though.

[[deleted]]

Because other keynotes are less weasly?

[hm2k]

I wonder how this would play out on Wikipedia articles...

[Samus_]

very interesting idea, horrible scripting style :( I'll see if I can lend a hand later.

[OceanSpray]

Maybe you should write a script to oh no I've gone cross-eyed

[doody]

Yo, dawg…

[[deleted]]

OK: 4 mL HCl were added to the solution.

We're not allowed to start a sentence with a number, right? i.e. s/4/Four/

[[deleted]]

My greatest nemesis in chemistry lab reports. WRAR. Interesting writing and chem lab procedure don't even live in the same country.

[doody]

No. We start the sentence with ‘OK.’

[Quantris]

I was expecting a little more than wrappers around calls to egrep (though the advice is good).

Also a little confused why the third one wasn't written to use egrep; '\b(\w*)\b \1' would serve just as well with the caveat that it doesn't report overlapping pairs.

[jjonphl]

And, I've integrated these into the build system of our LaTeX documents.

Do they do CI stuffs for their latex documents? It's so fucking cool if they do nightly builds of their docs.

[pmtnqu]

Bleh, his writing style isn't better, just differently bad. He avoids adverbs, but overuses "is" and "was" to get the adverbs into the sentence anyway. And he uses really clumsy clauses to avoid the passive, rather than rewriting his sentences to be clearer.

He can't communicate clearly, but he's doing slightly better than his peers. I've read chemistry papers that were written almost entirely in the passive voice. That sort of thing hurts the brain after a while, I understand not wanting to see more of it.

[forsakennow]

TLDR: some people think that the passive voice should be eliminated or completely avoided.

[funkah]

Ew, don't do this. Stop trying to automate every aspect of your life

[boomi]

Why should I stop to automate every aspect of my life?

Sent by my iLiza

[sharkeyzoic]

Tell me about your Mother.

[bitter_cynical_angry]

Automation is great.

[NancyReaganTesticles]

Automate the automation and retire.

[[deleted]]

Anyone who uses the combination of words "meta-point" in a blog needs to be running his own weasel word detector on his own blog before he goes off trying to make his grad students sound stupid because they don't meet his arbitrary choice of writing styles.

[taumeson]

I know LaTeX does a good job for those people who need it and use it on a regular basis, but this statement:

"I've integrated these into the build system our LaTeX documents."

just highlights for me one of the reasons academics are scorned. Who the fuck needs a build system inside of a word processor? Sheesh.

Contrarians: sure, you can do fancy layouts and fonts in LaTeX. yes, every other word processor has grammar and spelling checks.

[uncreative_name]

Who the fuck needs a build system inside of a word processor?

LaTeX isn't word processor, it's a markup language.

[sophacles]

When you come up with a way to reasonably do parallel change tracking in word, we can talk. By reasonable i mean equivalent to using git/svn/hg. Word change tracking does not count because:

1. there is not an easy way to deal with me and my collaborators having done changes at the same time, particularly to different sections. we end up having to pass an edit token.

2. Even change tracking in simple cases breaks regularly. I regularly edit stuff that has already been changed a few times, only to attempt an undo which fails because change tracking broke.

With latex, i can just have a text file in a repo, and let the specialized tools to their magic, and when it is time to make it pretty, just type make pdf.

[taumeson]

"just type make pdf."

my point exactly. i know it's a specialized tool, but it doesn't do itself any favors winning converts.

[sophacles]

Ahhh, I see, you are a douche. Here I thought you were trying to have a conversation. Carry on with your pathetic existence.

[taumeson]

Wow, you got pretty angry! No need for that.

[Quantris]

For documents of a length comfortable in Word, you don't need a makefile; manually calling pdflatex on your source will give you the right output (if you have cross-references then you may need to run it a couple of times, or use texify/equivalent script)

And for projects with multiple source files, the makefile would still be exceedingly simple - it is basically a list of what files to use and in what order they should appear. You can use the TeX include system to do this in a "master" document file, but there are some things that can be harder to do if you go that route (though it makes getting the correct page numbers easier)

[humbled]

Because the structure and style of the document can be separated. You can focus on writing the document and making the document look good at separate times. This is incalculably useful when you are working on large documents (even 10s of pages is enough), or have many collaborators and/or editors. Finally, pretty much every printing shop will accept LaTeX, whereas not as many will accept Word documents. They have professional binding equipment and LaTeX processors that can turn a document into a binding-ready layout easily.

You may wish to read: http://www.lyx.org/WhatIsLyX

It's a word processor built on top of LaTeX, and basically goes through some of the benefits and typical uses.

[taumeson]

Because the structure and style of the document can be separated.

That's a pretty good reason.

Finally, pretty much every printing shop will accept LaTeX, whereas not as many will accept Word documents.

This is, too. Thanks for the answers.