Passive and Active Voice

I love to write a few chapters and then go back and search for passages that can be reworked to sound less passive. Passive voice can be *yawn* boring. So what is passive voice? There are several definitions out there – but my favorite is straight and to the point. 

Passive Voice: When you make an object of an action into the subject of a sentence. So whoever or whatever is performing the action is not the grammatical subject of the sentence. 

Why is passive voice sometimes frowned upon? Because it often forces your reader to guess what you mean and quite honestly, these passages often lack pizzazz. This is because the subject’s be-er or do-er isn’t moving the sentence along but the subject of the sentence is acted upon by some other agent or by something unnamed. 

There is an easy way to find these annoying little passages. Look for a form of “to be” followed by a past particle. “To Be” verbs: has been, have been, had been, will be, will have been, are, am, is, was, and were.

I *heart* Control + F so I can search for them. I’m not always able to get rid of all of them and that's okay too.  

I learn best through example.  Here are a few I found surfing the net.

Active:

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Passive:

Why was the road crossed by the chicken?

Active:

The auditor approved the new budget.

Passive:

The new budget was approved by the auditor. 

Active:

Ben showed me his new car.

Passive:

The new car was showed to me by Ben.

Active:

I washed the dishes this morning.

Passive:

This morning the dishes were washed.

For those of you searching for passive passages within this blog?  Eh- yeah.  I’ll get right on that.

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