[BartMan1]

Jon Ronson’s book shares the wicked humor that laces his TED talks. The starting story that ignited this book, arguing with programmers about a spam bot that was taking over his digital identity, is hilarious – and the online shaming that made them finally turn it off is what launched this book. The hilarity of the situations he put himself in researching shame culture and how to survive it led to him, in professional clothing, standing around in an adult movie shoot.

With due respect, this is the most tortured opening paragraph I have seen in awhile.

The passive voice:"taking..starting...shaming..researching...standing..." makes for painful reading. I searched for meaning in this paragraph and was left adrift. Would that she had an editor.

[alexander_busek]

The passive voice:"taking..starting...shaming..researching...standing..." makes for painful reading. I searched for meaning in this paragraph and was left adrift. Would that she had an editor.

I am a professional editor (20+ years of professional experience, working full time).

In that excerpt, the syntax is, indeed, rather tortured. (My chief criticism is that the sentences are over-long and contain too many participial constructions. Further, the expression "starting story" is rather infelicitous.) The words you cited were participles (participial phrases), verb tenses (of the past continuous), and gerunds.

However, nowhere is the passive voice to be found in this passage.

Regards,