Awakened vs. Awoken

IWannaWrite

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I was awoken from my sleep.

I was awakened from my sleep.

Which is correct please?
 

amyashley

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"I was woken from my sleep."


This is probably the correct wording you need. I would steer clear of awaken for the type of book you are writing. It's a little, um, high language for a contemporary novel. Maybe if you were writing something historical or a high fantasy.
 

bip

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I would go with "I was done woke up by that there alarm clock" :D
 

maestrowork

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It's one of those baffling things about English. Awake. Wake. Awaken. Awoke. Woke. Awakened. WTF?

That and prepositions. Mind-boggling.
 

Karen Junker

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I was awoken from my sleep.

I was awakened from my sleep.

Which is correct please?

Both of these are a little passive. If you must have a character waking from sleep (one of the most common cliches and signs of a newbie writer), try something more active. How about: The alarm clock tore me out of a deep sleep.
 

IWannaWrite

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Both of these are a little passive. If you must have a character waking from sleep (one of the most common cliches and signs of a newbie writer), try something more active. How about: The alarm clock tore me out of a deep sleep.
It's not for a novel; it is for a letter I am writing to complain about something as in "I was awakened from my sleep at 3 am by the rap music blaring from my neighbor's teenage son's car as he drove by my house." :(
 

blacbird

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I don't understand how those two examples are different. Are you saying that the words can be used interchangeably?

As near as I can tell, yes, they are interchangeable. For some reason, "awoken" just sounds off to me, like it's maybe archaic. If I hit it as a reader, that's what I would think. So maybe if your story is trying to convey something from a past era, or the like, it would work. If you're dealing with a modern setting, I'd go with "awakened".

But, in either case, it pretty much dictates a passive sentence construction, and you might avoid the question by recasting the sentence into an active construction.

Addendum: I posted this before I saw your last post, so it's a little irrelevant to that purpose. But as a general writing comment, maybe useful, so I'll leave it as is.