Monday, November 9 passive to active voice

A Brief Grammatical Refresher

The key to understanding passive voice lies in accepting the fact that it's strictly a grammatical term which relates to how sentences are constructed. A quick grammar brush-up might be useful here. Read over the following:

The subject of a sentence is, essentially, what the sentence is about. It's usually a person, place, or thing. In most sentences, the subject is either doing some sort of action or being described. Almost all of the time, the subject is at the very beginning of an English sentence. (e.g. "Bob is silly.")

The object of a sentence appears at the opposite end, always after the action in the sentence. It, too, is usually a person, place or thing, and in most sentences it's the person, place, or thing to which the action is being done (e.g. "I laughed at Bob."). Not all sentences have objects, of course—just look at "Bob is silly," above.


Verbs are action words. Sometimes they're just used to describe states of existence (e.g. "Bob is silly."), but in most sentences you write they'll be actions (e.g. "I laughed at Bob.")
Understanding passive voice really all comes down to verbs. Whenever you put a verb in a sentence (that is: all the time), you are using one of two kinds of "voice," which is really just a fancy way of saying that you're deciding how "to indicate the relation of the subject [of the sentence] to the action." (Definition quoted from OED Online).

Agency is also very important—it's what describes the parts of a sentence in relation to the action. Both the subject and the object can be either an agent (the thing doing the action) or a patient (the thing having the action done to it), in addition to being grammatical subject and object. So, for example, in the sentence "Bob hit John," Bob is the agent (he's hitting John), and John is the patient (he's being hit by Bob).
Now, on to passive voice.

A Concise Explanation of Passive and Active Voice

There are two types of voice in English: passive and active.
Active voice is the most common, and results when the subject of a sentence is also the agent. That is, when the subject is the person, place, or thing doing the action. So you might say, for example, "I hit John with a stick." That's in the active voice because you, the subject of the sentence, are also the agent—you are doing the action, hitting John with a stick. (John is the object, and also the patient, being hit.)

Passive voice, on the other hand, results when the object of the sentence is doing the action (or is the agent), and the subject is receiving it (or is the patient). To continue abusing John, we might say "John was hit with a stick." This is passive voice because John, the subject of the sentence, is the one being acted upon.

To spot passive voice, here's all you need to do:

Examine the relationship between the subject, object, and verb of a sentence. If the object is the thing doing the verb, the sentence is passive. If the subject is the thing doing the verb, the sentence is active.

Problems with Passive Voice

For the most part, you probably want to write in the active voice when possible. That's because sentences written in active voice are generally clearer, more direct, and more compact.

The main problems with passive voice, then, are as follows:

It can be wordy. A lot of the time, passive voice requires awkward, lengthy, convoluted sentences instead of short, punchy, straightforward ones. "I found Jim's body odour atrocious" will end up "Jim's body odour was found to be atrocious by me"—yikes!
Most of the time, moving passive voice sentences to active voice will tighten your prose, make it more readable, and as a result confuse your readers less.

It can be vague. Take our example sentence from above, "Bob was hit by a stick." With a sentence like that in your story, readers are going to be missing some important information: who was doing the hitting? Too much vagueness like this isn't only off-putting, but it can actually confuse your readers about what's going on so much that they'll have to either closely re-read the whole scene, or just give up and go read something else.
By moving vague passive voice constructions into active voice, you can make your story's action crystal clear.

It can lead to other grammatical errors. Know about "dangling modifiers"? These are "a word or phrase that modifies a word not clearly stated in the sentence" (Definition quoted from Purdue OWL). Most of the time, they're fine, but sometimes passive voice can mix with dangling modifiers to leave you with a sentence that doesn't quite say what you think it does.
The example the Purdue OWL gives is perfect: "Having finished the assignment, the TV was turned on." Unlike the active version of that sentence, "Having finished the assignment, Jill turned on the TV," a passive voice version accidentally describes the TV as doing the assignment, not Jill.
Oops? When you have dangling modifiers, you may want to make sure you're using active voice in the main clause of the sentence, or you can accidentally ascribe actions to objects (and patients) instead of subjects (and agents).


In class: practice with active and passive tense.

Learning target: understanding and demonstrating the use of the active voice in lead writing.Remember that your leads are written in the active voice. Below is a review and practice examples. After reviewing the material, demonstrate that 
Active and Passive Voice

Summary: This examples below will explain the difference between active and passive voice in 

writing. It gives examples of both, and shows how to turn a passive sentence into an active one. Also, 

it explains how to decide when to choose passive voice instead of active.

Using Active Versus Passive Voice

In a sentence using active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action expressed in the verb.

 The arrow points from the subject performing the action (the dog) to the individual being acted upon (the boy). This is an example of a sentence using the active voice.

The subject performing the action described by the verb.

 The active voice sentence subject (watching a framed, mobile world) performs the action of reminding the speaker of something.
Active voice is used for most non-scientific writing.Using active voice for the majority of your sentences makes your meaning clear for readers, and keeps the sentences from becoming too complicated or wordy. Even in scientific writing, too much use of passive voice can cloud the meaning of your sentences.

 The action is performed upon the sentence subject, meaning this sentence is passive (indirect).

This is an example of the active voice because the sentence subject performs the action.

This is an example of the passive voice.

This is an example of an active voice sentence because the sentence subject performs the action.

Image Caption: This is an example of the passive voice.

 This is an example of an active voice sentence because its subject performs the action expressed in the verb.

Sentences in active voice are also more concise than those in passive voice because fewer words are required to express action in active voice than in passive.

This passive voice sentence is less concise than its active voice counterpart (shown below).

This active voice sentence requires fewer words to communicate the same idea as the passive voice version (above).

This passive voice sentence is more wordy than an active voice version.

This active voice sentence is more concise than the passive voice version (above) because the subject directly performs the action.

 

YOUR TURN    Due by midnight. Send along as a 

word document.

1. The school was struck by lightning.


2. This morning the burglar was arrested by the police.


3. One type of air pollution is caused by hydrocarbons.


4. An elaborate supper for the miners was prepared by Mr. Patel and his children.


5. The cookies were stolen by the Mad Hatter.


6. New York City's Central Park was designed in 1857 by F.L. Olmsted and Calbert Vaux.


7. It was decided by the court that the contract was invalid.


8. The first commercially successful portable vacuum cleaner was invented by a janitor who was allergic to dust.


9. After Leonardo da Vinci's death, the Mona Lisa was purchased by King Francis I of France.


10. The allegorical novel Animal Farm was written by British author George Orwell during World War II.
11. Before the semester was over, the new nursing program had been approved by the Curriculum Committee and the Board of Trustees.
12.  With five seconds left in the game, an illegal time-out was called by one of the players.
13. Later in the day, the employees were informed of their loss of benefits by the boss herself.
14. The major points of the lesson were quickly learned by the class, but they were also quickly forgotten by them.
15. For several years, Chauncey was raised by his elderly grandmother.
16. An unexpected tornado smashed several homes and uprooted trees in a suburb of Knoxville.
17. Participants in the survey were asked about their changes in political affiliation.
18. Tall buildings and mountain roads were avoided by Raoul because he had such a fear of heights.
19. "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
20. I was surprised by the teacher's lack of sympathy.