Passive active voice4/10/2024 Side Note: The use of “to be” verbs ( is, are, were, etc.) is a big tip off that a sentence may be passive (though not always because you can’t completely avoid using them). You want them to perform for you.Īctive Voice: The instructor graded the midterm exams. the subject of your sentence) a lot of money to act in your sentence. Side Note: Imagine that you are the director of your sentence, and you have paid your star (a.k.a. simple present3 rd person plural: are + past participleDo not include the agent when it is unknown/unimportant/obvious. Use the same tense as in the active sentence. Make them the subject (star) of your sentence. Rewrite the sentences in the passive voice.What’s the action in the sentence? (graded).These steps help spot a passive sentence and revise it into the active voice: Passive Voice:The midterm exams were graded by the instructor. Remember, you want to be “active” not “passive” in your writing. In this sentence, 'cereal' is the object, 'eaten' is the verb and 'my sister' is the subject. Example: The cereal was eaten by my sister. A passive sentence or phrase may lead with the object, and the verb and then the subject follow. Instead, writers prefer the active voice because the subject of the sentence is actually doing the action (thus making the sentence more commanding and confident). Passive voice tells you what an action is doing to someone or something. With passive voice, the subject receives the action of the verb. Sometimes a prepositional phrase like "by the" in the sentences above indicates that the action is performed on the subject, and that the sentence is passive.Writers try to avoid the passive voice when possible because the passive voice often leads to wordier and less powerful sentences. With active voice, the subject performs the action of the verb. Don't assume that just because there is a form of 'be' that the sentence is passive, however. You can recognize passive voice because the verb phrase will include a form of be (was, am, are, been, is). Another way to recognize passive-voice sentences is that they may include a "by the." phrase after the verb the agent performing the action, if named, is the object of the preposition in this phrase. The presence of a be-verb, however, does not necessarily mean that the sentence is in passive voice. You can recognize passive-voice expressions because the verb phrase will always include a form of be, such as am, is, was, were, are, or been. Instead, the writing appears to convey information that is not limited or biased by individual perspectives or personal interests. This practice helps to create the appearance of an objective, fact-based discourse because writers can present research and conclusions without attributing them to particular agents. 2 This contrasts with active voice, in which the. 1 In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb that is, the person or thing that undergoes the action or has its state changed. In scientific writing, however, passive voice is more readily accepted since using it allows one to write without using personal pronouns or the names of particular researchers as the subjects of sentences (see the third example above). A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. Passive voice sometimes makes more sense than active voice if the agent performing the action is unimportant, obvious, or unknown, or if the writer wants to avoid mentioning the agent altogether. Also, overuse of passive voice throughout an essay can cause your prose to seem flat and uninteresting. Passive voice is used sometimes in scientific writing to draw attention to processes and results, instead of the individual researcher. Sometimes the use of passive voice can create awkward sentences, as in the last example above. The subject of the passive voice sentence performs the action expressed in the verb in this example. Its structure is- Object + verb +subject. Passive voice expresses an action that is carried out on the subject of the sentence. Its structure goes like this- Subject + Verb+ Object. Writing Letters of Recommendation for Students Active voice describes a sentence where the subject is the doer of an action.
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