Passive voice

Passive Voice
English verbs have two voices—active and passive. Students often use the passive voice because they think it sounds more professional. The truth is that passive voice, instead ofmaking a paper sound more professional, actually makes the writing unclear, hard to follow, and boring. Good writing keeps passive voice at the bare minimum and uses active voice. Active sentences areusually more economical and fluid than passive ones. Plus, they simply sound better. Active verbs occur when the subject of the sentence performs the action of the sentence. The person or objectperforming an action is called the agent. Passive voice occurs when the subject is the recipient of the action. Passive: The man was bitten by the dog. Passive: Jackie was given a gift by her mother. Passive:The pencil was sharpened by me. Active: The dog bit the man. Active: Jackie’s mother gave her a gift. Active: I sharpened the pencil.

Passive voice presents problems when the prepositional phraseat the end of the sentence, often beginning with by, is left off. The sentence loses information. (This is a common strategy in politics.) The man was bitten. Jackie was given a gift. The pencil wassharpened.

In many sentences the agent/recipient relationship isn’t immediately clear. In the following example, “Professor Murray” is the agent and “the lecture” is the recipient. Active: ProfessorMurray delivered the lecture. Passive: The lecture was delivered by Professor Murray. How do I change passive constructions into active constructions? 1. Identify the passive verb. Go through yourwhole paper and circle every instance of the verb “to be”: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been. Remember that not every to be verb indicates passive voice. To identify passive voice, look for pastparticiples, which often end in -ed (selected, loaded, side-swiped, bitten, delivered) that are next to a to be verb. Fred was [to be verb] selected [past participle] by his peers to serve on the...