Overview:
Passive voice is an essential component of the English language. However, many instructors prefer that you limit your use of passive voice and find that its over use detracts from the overall quality of your essays. To understand passive voice, you will first need to learn a little about what is called active voice. You should have demonstrated a mastery of parts of speech and complete sentences before completing this lesson.
Active Voice:
Active voice is the most common voice in English. It follows the preferred Subject-Verb-Object pattern of the English language. In other words, in English the majority of our sentences have the subject come first, then a verb, then the object of that verb. You already know the question to ask yourself to determine the subject, but you need to learn one to determine the object:
Subject- ask yourself: Who/what is verbing?
Object- ask yourself: Who/what is being verbed?
Notice where the subject appears in the following sentence:
The dog bit the man.
This follows and Subject/Verb/Object (or S/V/O) because the dog (subject) bit (verb) the man (object)
In English, if you want to change the meaning of the sentence, you change the order of the words.
The man bit the dog.
In this example, the man (subject) bit (verb) the dog (object).
Notice how it is only the word order in English that helps us figure out what our subject is.
Our definition of active voice will be when the verb is conjugated to show that the subject is doing the action of the sentence. And, generally this will mean that the subject comes before (to the left of) the verb.
Passive Voice:
Don’t panic, because this will seem overwhelming at first, but it will make more sense when you see an example:
To change a sentence from active voice to passive voice the following transformation must occur.
*The Object moves to the front of the sentence.
*The Verb changes to a “to be + participle form.”
*The Subject moves to after the verb and comes after the word “by”.
Active Voice: The dog bit the man.
Passive Voice: The man was bitten by the dog.
Notice that your subject in the Passive voice example stays the same. If you ask yourself “Who is doing the biting?” in the passive example, the answer is still the dog. So essentially, the sentences mean the same thing, but one is said in an active voice, and the other in a passive voice.
Agent
The “by the…” is called the agent, a term that tells you who is the agent of the action or the one doing the action.
The agent can be omitted in a passive construction to avoid showing who or what was responsible for the action. Also, passive is sometimes used when the agent is actually unknown. Notice how all of the agents (the subjects of an active voice sentence) are missing in the following examples.
Ø Mistakes were made.
Ø Feelings were hurt.
Ø The light fixture was broken.
Ø The book was stolen.
When to use passive:
Generally, passive voice is not preferred. [agent intentionally and ironically omitted]. People often fall into the habit of using passive and are not even aware of it, which makes their writing lack force and flow. A good approach is to avoid passive when possible, and if you do use it, make sure that you have a very good reason for doing so.
*Imagery was used by the author to create a feeling of… (Passive)
*The author used imagery to create a feeling of… (Active and preferred in this case.)
A great use of Passive Voice:
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill, commenting on the efforts of the Royal Air Force during World War II, uses passive voice to great effect in this sentence. However, we can be fairly sure that he knew exactly what he was doing, and why passive was a good choice for this very famous quotation.
© kmcelliott 2008