ACTIVE VOICE A sentence in which some thing or someone acts on something else can be written two ways: active and passive.

In the active voice, the person (or animal or thing) acts directly on the object. The subject performs the action the verb describes.

Active: This semester the English department will give several writing awards.

Active: The dog chased the cat around the house and up the tree.

In the passive voice, the subject receives the action: instead of the subject doing something, something happens to the subject. The person or thing doing the action is no longer the subject of the verb.

A sentence written in the passive voice contains more words and is organized differently. Notice that a passive sentence may not tell the reader who is performing the action. Compare the examples above to the examples below:

Passive: This spring several writing awards will be given by the English department.

Passive: This spring several writing awards will be given.

Passive: The cat was chased around the house and up the tree by the dog.

Passive: The cat was chased around the house and up the tree.

In the active voice, the person or thing doing the action is emphasized: The English department will give…

In the passive voice, the thing that is acted upon is emphasized: The awards will be given… The meaning has not changed-only the emphasis.

Some sentences cast in the passive voice sound dull or ineffective. To make the sentence active, make the actor the subject of the sentence.

Weak: The wall was hit by Dewey Jones driving at 160 MPH.

Better: Dewey Jones hit the wall while driving at 160 MPH.

Weak: The boat was steered into the jetty by the inexperienced sailor.

Better: The inexperienced sailor steered the boat into the jetty.

The passive voice may be useful when the one doing the action irrelevant, unimportant, unknown, or obvious.

Passive: Lights should be turned off.

Passive: Five hundred English L lessons were turned in this week.

Passive: Five hundred English L lessons were turned in this week by my students.

Passive: His wallet was stolen.

Passive: Christmas is celebrated on December 25th.

The passive voice may also be used when the writer wants to emphasize the receiver of the action.

Passive: We should be informed of our rights.

Passive: When I woke up in the hospital, my broken leg had been set.

Passive: When I woke up in the hospital, my broken leg had been set by the surgeon.

Often, governments, schools, businesses, and other institutes use the passive voice, particularly when some kind of action is required or desired, but the writer does not want to command or order the action.

Passive: Grade sheets should be turned in no later than 3 p.m. this Friday.

Passive: Paychecks must be distributed every two weeks.

Voice tells the reader whether a subjects is acting (She fought for her rights) or being acted upon (Her rights were fought for). Most writers try to use the ACTIVE VOICE whenever possible because it not only livens up their writing, it produces clearer, leaner, more direct sentences.

Passive voice relies on passive verbs-forms of the verb "to be": be, am, is , are, was, were, being, and been.

ACTIVE VOICE relies on active verbs-verbs that show action. In the sentence examples above, "fought" is an active verb; "were" is a passive verb. Try to use active verbs whenever possible, as we suggest above, but sometimes the passive is more accurate or preferable.

For example, in the sentence, "The president was rumored to have considered resigning," uses the passive "was" because the writer didn't hear the president consider resigning, nor does the writer know who actually did hear the president consider resigning: It was just a "rumor."

The passive voice in this case is necessary and honest. Writers can and do, however, use the passive voice dishonestly, to avoid responsibility. Consider the following sentence:

Because the safety inspection was not monitored, the mechanism was left unaligned, a fact that was known several months before the accident when it was finally decided to reveal that information.

The writer of this sentence seems to be less concerned with style than with avoiding responsibility. The passive verb "with" allows the writer to avoid naming names: We don't know who was in charge of safety and monitoring, who left the mechanism unaligned, who knew all this months in advance of an accident, or who decided to reveal all the information.

PREPOSITIONS: Passive voice and string of prepositional phrases often go hand in hand. Unlike the few passive verbs which are easy to remember (be, am, is , are, was, were, being, and been), there are more than 50 prepositions.

Here's a definition: Prepositions are important structural words that express relationships-in time, space, or other senses-between nouns or pronouns and other words in a sentence.

Following are some common prepositions:

about around beside for of regarding upon above as between from off since with across at beyond in on through without after before by inside onto toward against behind down into out under along below during like over until among beneath except near past up

ACTIVE VOICE REVISING SENTENCES: Following is a method for revising sentences for clarity, accuracy, style, and energy, form Richard A. Lanham's book, Revising Prose.

(N.B. Remember that sentence revision comes in the later stages of the writing process, when you have a finished draft that is focused, developed, and organized. It is pointless to spend time and energy on revising sentences in prewriting or in early discovery drafts because those sentences may not even appear on your final revision.)

THE METHOD: (Imagine that you have a draft in front of you and that you are ready to start work on sentence structure, clarity, and style.)

1. Underline all the PASSIVE VERBS in your draft. This is easy since there are not many: be, am, is, are, was, were, being, and been.

2. Circle all the PREPOSITIONS, a bit harder since there are so many of them; but don't worry. Identify as many as you can; you'll begin to recognize more the more you work with the method. You can also refer to the list of common prepositions on the previous page.

Strings of prepositional phrases create mindless, wordy redundancy. For example, "We are in the state of California." (California is a state); "I am studying in the field of law" (law is a field); and "Her eyes were blue in color" (blue is a color). And how may times have you heard this stale phrase? "In today's troubled times…" or "In society today…"? This is not writing or composing: it's stringing together ready-made phrases.

3. Find out where the action is and rebuild the sentence on that action. In other words, replace the passive verbs with ACTIVE ones.

Example: An active verb is needed by this sentence.

Revised: This sentence needs an active verb.

Here another example, taken from a college sociology textbook: Throughout our lives, we are exposed to a lot of different teachings, and one of them in today's society is the value upon a life in which we are successful.

Revised: Our society teaches us the value of success. (Lard factor: 77%)

At this point you may think, "but the other sounds so much more intelligent. Not really. It is bloated, wordy and unclear; the purpose of writing is to communicate with your readers, not confuse them.

"Good prose," said George Orwell, " is like a windowpane: Clear." Unfortunately we read so much bad writing that we begin to think it's good-that there's something wrong with us, not the writing, if we don't understand.

In one of Moliere's plays, a character stands gazing in admiration of a document. "It must be very fine," he says, "because I don't understand a word of it!" Good writing is clean, clear, and simple-not simplistic, which means obvious, superficial, and lacking in substance or complexity of thought. Simple means uncluttered, unpretentious, sincere. Oftentimes passive overburdened sentence with pretentious diction mask the absence of a real idea.

 

EXCERCISE

YOUR NAME:
YOUR EMAIL:
TODAY'S DATE:

 

For practice, revise the following sentences by replacing passive verbs with active ones, and work on wordiness as well. Try to create clean, lean, active sentences. Use the steps in the method to help your revision.

1. For today's audience, the demand is for motion pictures and for television.

2. Halley's Comet was first predicted to return by astronomer Edmund Halley.

3. Your stereo was stolen because the door was accidentally left open by James.

4. It was know by their families that Sean and Ryan had left Santa Cruz to surf in Hawaii.

5. Lincoln is honored because he saved the union.

6. There was exact precision in their preparation of the data.

7. She was given perfect scores by two judges.

8. There was a considerable erosion of the land as a result of the floods in winter.

9. A presidential appeal was made to the people of the United States for the conservation of gasoline.

10. He is suggesting that the discussion of the issues be done with care.

In his essay, "Simplicity," William Zinsser writes that "Clutter is the disease of American Writing. WE are society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frill, and meaningless jargon…Our national tendency is to inflate and thereby sound important. The airline pilot who announces that he is presently anticipating considerable precipitation wouldn't dream of saying it may rain. The sentence is too simple-there must be something wrong with it. But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components…"

In 1942 during World War II, the government issued a blackout order: Such preparations shall be made as will completely obscure all Federal buildings and non-Federal buildings occupied by the Federal government during an air raid for any period of time from visibility by reason of internal or external lighting." President Franklin D. Roosevelt read the memo and converted it into clear English: "Tell them," he said, "that in buildings where they have to keep the work going to put something over the windows."

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