Today passive voice will be learned (do you see what I did there? Huh?…. Anybody?…) After this lesson you will have the rest of the period to work on your formative projects. Don’t forget that you have your second check in tomorrow.
But sometimes you might want to use passive voice. For example:
What Is Active Voice?
I’ll start with active voice because it’s simpler. In an active sentence, the subject is doing the action. A straightforward example is the sentence “Steve loves Mary.” Steve is the subject, and he is doing the action: he loves Mary, the object of the sentence.
Another example is the title of the Marvin Gaye song “I Heard It through the Grapevine.” “I” is the subject, the one who is doing the action. “I” is hearing “it,” the object of the sentence.
What Is Passive Voice?
In passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Instead of saying, “Steve loves Mary,” I would say, “Mary is loved by Steve.” The subject of the sentence becomes Mary, but she isn’t doing anything. Rather, she is just the recipient of Steve’s love. The focus of the sentence has changed from Steve to Mary.
If you wanted to make the title of the Marvin Gaye song passive, you would say “It was heard by me through the grapevine,” not such a catchy title anymore.
Is “To Be” a Sign of a Passive Sentence?
A lot of people think all sentences that contain a form of the verb “to be” are in passive voice, but that isn’t true. For example, the sentence “I am holding a pen” is in active voice, but it uses the verb “am,” which is a form of “to be.” The passive form of that sentence is “The pen is being held by me.”
Notice that the subject, the pen, isn’t doing anything in that sentence. It’s not taking an action; it’s passive. One clue that your sentence is passive is that the subject isn’t taking a direct action.
Is Passive Voice Always Wrong?
Passive voice isn’t wrong, but it’s often a poor way to present your thoughts.
Another important point is that passive sentences aren’t incorrect; it’s just that they often aren’t the best way to phrase your thoughts. Sometimes passive voice is awkward and other times it’s vague. Also, passive voice is usually wordy, so you can tighten your writing if you replace passive sentences with active sentence.
When you put sentences in passive voice, it’s easy to leave out the person or thing doing the action. For example, “Fred is loved,” is passive. The problem with that sentence is that you don’t know who loves Fred. Of course, maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe you want to emphasize the idea that Fred is just loved in general, in which case, that’s fine.
Politicians often use passive voice to intentionally obscure the idea of who is taking the action. Ronald Reagan famously said, “Mistakes were made,” when referring to the Iran-Contra scandal. Other examples of passive voice for political reasons could include “Bombs were dropped,” and “Shots were fired.” Pay attention to the news and listen for examples of passive voice.
Also, businesses sometimes use passive voice. It sounds better to write, “Your electricity will be shut off,” than “We, the electric company, will be shutting off your power.”
Is Passive Voice Hard to Understand?
A recent study suggests that less educated people–those who dropped out of school when they were 16–have a harder time understanding sentences written in the passive voice than those written in active voice.
Source: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/active-voice-versus-passive-voice