Responsibility Fog
Responsibility Fog is what happens when writing has been carefully designed so events occur, priorities emerge, and outcomes drift into being without any human being clearly attached to them.
This page targets searches around corporate accountability language, passive voice at work, and why company memos often hide ownership.
What this category measures
Wording that removes or blurs the actor in a decision, failure, or missed commitment.
Institutional prose that turns accountability into weather patterns.
Why it shows up so often
Because naming the person or team responsible can create political friction. Fog is smoother.
Because passive structures make failure sound less like a choice and more like an unfortunate process outcome.
How the detector spots it
- Passive voice clustered around failure, delay, or bad news.
- Heavy use of collective nouns like "the business" and "the organisation" when a named actor would be more honest.
- Sentences where the action is visible but the owner is missing.
Real examples
A decision was made to deprioritise the initiative
Someone made the call, but the sentence has entered witness protection.
Expectations were not aligned
People failed to coordinate, and no one wants the blame.
Mistakes were made in the rollout
Mistakes absolutely were made. By whom remains a premium feature.
Ready to test it on live text?
Detect some bullshit