posted
Here's an excerpt from "The Elements of Style"
quote:
The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive:
I shall always remember my first visit to Boston.
This is much better than
My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me.
The latter sentence is less direct, less bold, and less concise. If the writer tries to make it more concise by omitting "by me,"
My first visit to Boston will always be remembered,
it becomes indefinite: is it the writer, or some person undisclosed, or the world at large, that will always remember this visit? This rule does not, of course, mean that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary.
You can read the whole book, which is very short, here:
The subject of the sentence should answer the question: "Who or what performed the action?"
The police arrested her. (Who did the arresting? Oh yeah, the police.)
She was arrested. (Who did the arresting? Hmmm...I don't know, who?)
She was arrested by the police. (Who did the arresting? The police, but they're not the subject.)
I'm going to set up a little passive voice exercise in the writing lesson for all those (especially newbies, but all are welcome) who remain unclear on this issue.
There's a key thing to remember. Sometimes passive voice says precisely what you want it to say. It depends. If I have a whole paragraph of good active voice and description and I want to sum it up quickly, I may do in the easiest way possible.
For instance: I've just written about the police surrounding a house with the bad guy inside. All I want to do is state the obvious for effect, so at the end of that paragraph, I simply say: Bert was trapped. That's passive, but it's plain what's what from the preceding text.
Sure, I could probably leave it out, or write: The police had trapped Bert, or, "I'm trapped," said Pete. But I'm not looking for proper grammar here, I'm looking for 3 quick words for a specific effect. And yes, some people will moan, but it's my story, I know why I did it, and I did it for a reason.
Most of the time an author should avoid the passive voice. And then there are times when nothing else works as well.
posted
The passive is formed by flipping the subject and the direct object, so
Sam loved Sue becomes Sue was loved by Sam.
The passive is formed by putting the object in the subject's slot (before the verb) and by using a form of be (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been) with a past participle form of the original verb. A past participle is the form of the verb that is usually used with have (have eaten, have slept, have thought, etc.).
If you look at the first sentence of the previous paragraph (The passive is formed), you'll see that I have a form of be (is) with a past participle (have formed) to make is formed, so it's in passive voice. To make this sentence active, I would have to find out the subject of form--who's doing the forming of the passive voice? Really, in this sentence, it's not important. I could say You form the passive, but that sounds weirder than The passive is formed. This is one good time to use the passive voice--when the actor is not really important.
Other times you might want to use the passive voice are
1) when you don't know the actor, as in Billy was murdered. Who murdered Billy? Nobody knows yet.
2) when using the active voice might be impolite, as in The document was lost instead of You lost the document
If you have been told that you use a lot of the passive voice in your writing, a good way to start looking for it is to search your writing for forms of be. In fiction, you'd probably see was and were the most, or maybe been. Then check for a past participle following the form of be. Also ask yourself who is doing the action, and if that person isn't in the subject slot, ask yourself if the sentence could or should be recast in the active voice.
posted
another example of where a passive sentence CAN be a good thing is to put a character's thoughts in the midst of commotion in passive. it has the effect of putting it towards the back, of deadening it, making the actions of the outside world more important.
granted, when that illusion is NOT what you want to achieve, you want to completely avoid using passive at all.
posted
And all this technical jargon gets really confusing if you're not careful!
In all honesty, the best way to get better at knowing when to use passive voice is by playing with your sentences to see what flows best. At first, this is going to drive you nuts, and a lot of people are going to pick on you for using too much passive voice, but eventually you'll figure out what you like and what you can do with passive voice. It's an effective tool, once you learn to use it properly.
posted
I don't, but then that isn't one of my big problems.
I do go through and look for wordy constructions like "in order to" (not "to") or "rise up" (not "rise"), or, worse, "were observing" (not "observed").
posted
I don't because usually I don't have a problem with passive and active voice... that's thanks to an eighth-grade grammar nazi who forced us to do so many passive/active voice exercises that I can't *not* know how to use it. Which is not to say that I don't make mistakes, because I do; it only says that I got lucky.
Posts: 437 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
since i carefully craft each sentence to be exactly the way i want it... no, i actually have grammar check turned off... well, the automatic grammar check, before i send it out to be critiqued i run it through one scan just to be certain
Posts: 477 | Registered: Oct 2004
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