Voice is a complex issue, but it appears to mark a prominent object that the speaker chooses to make prominent. In English there are two voices: active and passive. The passive voice is the marked ...
Writing in the active voice makes the meaning clear while keeping sentences from becoming complicated and wordy. Sentences using passive voice are not necessarily wrong, just less effective than ...
To create their Passive Aggression Scale, Lim and Suh recruited experts (people with a background in psychology, human behavior or counseling) to answer a series of open-end questions about ...
The passive voice is used when we want to focus attention on the person or thing affected by the action. Normally, the performer of the action, or the agent, comes first and is made the subject of ...
Below is a brief exercise in identifying passive voice constructions. Read each sentence below. If you think that it contains a passive voice construction, click YES; if you think that it does not ...
In the exercise below, you are to distinguish between true passive voice constructions and stative passive constructions. After reading each sentence, record your choice by clicking on either the word ...
The Manila Times on MSN1d
In defense of the passive voice
THE cult of the active voice is one of the most enduring in English grammar. From grade school onwards most everybody is ...
1. The voice of the verb is distinct from its tense. Don't confuse the passive voice with the past tense. (Sentence 2 happens to be in the past tense, but 3 is not; both 2 and 3 are in the passive ...