Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <passive-voice><active-voice>
Title: Does "I've temporarily suspended" mean that I did it?
Question: I use "I've temporarily suspended activity on SOru" in my profile description. And I've thought that it means that "I'm not active on site anymore".  But one guy said that I'm wrong, and told‫‪‫‪​​​​​​​​ me that it means that "someone banned the account".  I've thought that if he is correct there should be passive voice and the sentence will look like "My activity has temporarily been suspended on SOru".  So, what's the correct form?

Answers:
sents: text: Grammatically you're correct, you're saying that you have done something.
text: However, your choice of words is unfortunate since suspend and suspension are often used for involuntary suspension too.
text: Taking Wiktionary as a source: suspend 7.
text: To debar, or cause to withdraw temporarily, from any privilege, from the execution of an office, from the enjoyment of income, etc. to suspend a student from college; to suspend a member of a club suspension 5.
text: The temporary barring of a person from a workplace, society, etc.
text: pending investigation into alleged misconduct.
text: Your phrasing is close to something like "[the account] has been temporarily suspended" which would not sound at all unusual in a case where the account had been frozen by the system or its administrator.
text: You could make your intent clearer with something like "I've temporarily stopped using [this account/service]" or "I don't currently/actively use [this account/service]".
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/70130/ilkkachu
score: 33
sents: text: "I've (I have)
text: [done something]" is used when the speaker is saying that he or she has personally done something.
text: "I've temporarily suspended activity on SOru" means that you, yourself, ceased activity on SOru (it was your action).
text: If somebody or something else made that happen, you could say "I have been suspended on SOru".
text: Compare: "
text: I've burned my house down.
text: " I have personally started a fire in my house which burned it down.
text: "My house has been burned down.
text: " Someone or something has started a fire in my house which burned it down.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/46805/Michael Harvey
score: 32
sents: text: There is also a possibility that someone might misread "I've temporarily suspended..." as "I'm temporarily suspended..."
text: - I suspect that's what that one guy did.
text: Although the sentence would be ungrammatical as I'm temporarily suspended activity on SOru people's interpretation of what that means might be established before they have finished reading the whole sentence.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/84428/Stobor
score: 12
sents: text: Active voice: I've temporarily suspended activity on SOru.
text: That means you did it yourself.
text: It has the same meaning as: I've temporarily suspended my own activity on SOru.
text: Passive voice:
text: I've been temporarily suspended on SOru.
text: Someone else did it, but you didn't say who.
text: It has the same meaning as: I've been temporarily suspended on SOru by someone .
text: State: I'm temporarily suspended on SOru.
text: You are in the state of being suspended.
text: It's not clear who did it.
text: It has the same meaning as: My activity is temporarily suspended on SOru.
text: "
text: To suspend" some one is more common than "to suspend" some thing , and that might account for the confusion too.
text: Your original sentence is fine, because you said what you were suspending (activity).
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/9936/CJ Dennis
score: 5
sents: text: I can read your sentence in two ways without really trying too hard, the phrase.. temporarily suspended activity ..can be read both in a verby sense and a nouny sense.
text: The meaning slightly changes when you read it as either one or the other.
text: This isn't something others here have mentioned...
text: In the verby sense it says what you expect, that you have done something, and that thing you've done is temporarily suspended your active participation.
text: In the nouny sense, the meaning changes to something akin to "I own some activity that is suspended".
text: This is, imo, why your reader is so convinced that this is what you meant.
text: The key problem here is that "activity" is both a thing that exists as data on the website, and can also mean your active participation on that website .
text: This is what can confuse the matter.
text: He didn't misread it, he didn't misinterpret, he did fail to realise your intended meaning though.
text: The truth is your sentence has ambiguity because the word "activity" is ambiguous in its definition.
text: I suspect people here will use a dictionary to prove me wrong, but the fact is that activity is a word commonly used in software circles and can mean more than one thing at once.
text: For example; "I went to the history page on the website to look at my activity info."
text: Your activity is both what you've done, and the data contained on the website, very ambiguous... To answer your actual question, I would either avoid the word activity or give it a better qualification, for example;
text: "I've temporarily suspended my activity on SOru" better yet;
text: "I've temporarily suspended my active participation on SOru"
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/89307/Dan Rayson
score: 4

Summary of the answers:
Grammatically, you are correct, saying that you have done something. "I've temporarily suspended activity on Soru" means that you, yourself, ceased activity on SOru (it was your action). However, there is also a possibility that someone might misread  "I've temporarily suspended..."  as  "I'm temporarily suspended..."
You are correct in your usage and it means that you have suspended activity, but it could sound similar to "I've been suspended" or "I'm temporarily suspended".