Passive / Active voice

Status
Not open for further replies.

mr mistook

I'm starting to get a handle on the whole 'passive voice' thing and I'm trying to stamp it out of my writing habits.

I understand, that it's bad to say:

"Her eyes were brown."

And it's better to try something like:

"Her eyes caught the sunlight and glinted like amber."


But how far does this rule extend? Should inanimate objects be described in active voice too? And what counts as active?

EX:

"He examined the rock. It was round enough for his purposes."

Should I rewrite that as:

"He examined the rock. It's roundness begged him to use it."



It just... seems like at some point, the story turns into an acid trip where everything is absurdly animate. :jump
 

aes23

..

That is actually not the definition of Active vs. Passive voice.

Passive:
The book was passed to Sharon.
The race was won by Bob.
Active:
Henry passed Sharon the book.
Bob won the race.

Notice that in passive voice, the action is being performed to or of the subject (hence, suggesting passivity). In active voice, the subject is performing the act (hence, suggesting action).



Incidentally, I completely reject the premise that the sentence, "Her eyes were brown," is an any way inferior to, "Her eyes caught the sunlight and glinted like amber." In fact, I'd prefer the former in most cases, unless there was good reason for the latter. Ditto for the second set of example sentences. Wordiness just for its own sake does not make for good writing. I am not even speaking as a writer here, I am speaking as a reader. Hemingway would have sooner shot himself than write something like, "Its roundness begged him to use it." Even more loquacious authors, I feel, do try to keep things as succinct as possible, wherever possible. Beautiful sentences are great to read, but make sure they are also accurate, precise, and relevant.

Again, I am not an author, so perhaps take my advice on this second subject with a grain of salt if you must. But I am an avid reader, and it is with that experience that I advise as such. It doesn't take a master of the craft to recognize good writing.
 

sc211

Re: ..

As said above, you can easily overdo it. "Was" and "were" should always be be checked, but in many cases they're fine.

In fact, it's often good to use passive voice after an action scene to like calm things down and let up on the tension. It gives a breather for a paragraph or so.

It can also be used to give a tone of lethargy, as describing someone sacked out on a beach: "His shoes were off and his eyes were covered by his hat" gives a better intended tone than "He'd taken off his shoes and covered his eyes with his hat."

Check out the books you like and see how often they're used, and to what effect.
 

Jamesaritchie

As aes23 says, active voice is when the subject of the sentence is performing/causing the action. Passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is being acted upon. This is what you have to look at to determine active voice.

The examples you give are only whether to write something simply or flowery, plain or poetic. Both "Her eyes were brown," and "Her eyes caught the sunlight and glinted like amber" are fine sentences, and which to use depends upon style, the situation, the character/narrator saying the line, the mood and tone of the story, etc.
 

Eowyn Eomer

Passive:
The book was passed to Sharon.
The race was won by Bob.
Active:
Henry passed Sharon the book.
Bob won the race.
Sounds like apples and oranges to me.

What's wrong with active voice?

I understand, that it's bad to say:

"Her eyes were brown."

And it's better to try something like:

"Her eyes caught the sunlight and glinted like amber."
Are her eyes brown or amber? From my understanding, the two are not the same color. Isn't amber more of a gold color?

As aes23 says, active voice is when the subject of the sentence is performing/causing the action. Passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is being acted upon. This is what you have to look at to determine active voice.
Ah, thank you for that clarification. :)
 

mr mistook

Aha! I was wrong. I was under the impression that any instance of "were" or "was" was to be avoided at all costs.

Anyway, I'd much rather say, "Her eyes were brown" .


As for the question of brown vs amber: Amber is more of a gold color, which is what brown eyes can look like when they're catching the sunlight just right.
 

HConn

My suggestion:

Take a book you really like. Something you admire and think "Wish I could write like that."

Open to a page at random and use a highlighter to mark all the verbs. Just one page. But look at the verbs and ask yourself how many are active or passive, how many are common words or uncommon, how many are modified with adverbs and how many are not.

Proscriptions against writing a certain kind of sentence are not worth the time it takes to dismiss them. Don't work from abstract rules or theory. Go to the real thing to see how it's done.
 

Writing Again

Active and passive voice are grammatical terms.

The person, animal, or object that is doing something is active. The one it is being done to is passive.

Passive sentences tend to be weak for three reasons: One they focus on who or what receives the action rather than on who or what does the action, they tend to be wordy, and they are harder to picture in the mind's eye.

In the sentence:

Henry passed the book to Sharon.

It is a sentence that is visual and easy to picture. You picture Henry passing the book. Who does he pass the book to? Sharon.

Henry is the subject of the sentence. He is active: He does something: He passes the book: That puts the sentence squarely in the active voice.

The book is passive: Something is done to the book: It receives the action of the verb: passed. The book is the direct object of the verb.

Sharon is passive: Something is done to her: She receives the book. In fact she is the indirect object of the verb: passed.

When you make the book, which is passive and receives the action the subject of the sentence you have:

The book was passed to Sharon by Henry.

The subject of the sentence: The book, is passive and receives the action of the verb: This gives the sentence the passive voice.

This sentence is not nearly as visual. It is much harder to picture. First you picture the book. Then you picture it being handed. Next you discover to whom it is being handed: Sharon. Last of all you discover who is doing the handing: Henry.

It is also two words longer than the active voice.

You can make any of the three nouns: Henry, book, Sharon: the subject of the sentence. Something interesting happens when you make the indirect object of a sentence the subject. It suddenly becomes active and the one who originally committed the action becomes the indirect object of the verb.

Sharon accepted the book from Henry.

Now she is actively accepting the book.

Now if you really want an ultra passive sentence try this one:

The book was accepted by Sharon from Henry.
 

HConn

The book was passed to Sharon by Henry.

The subject of the sentence: The book, is passive and receives the action of the verb: This gives the sentence the passive voice.

This sentence is not nearly as visual. It is much harder to picture.

I don't find it hard to visualize. It's true that the focus of the sentence is the book, and not Henry, but that might be just the effect the writer is going for. If the book is the Necronomicon and Sharon has spent 300 pages searching for it, that passive sentence might be exactly the right construction.

Neither active nor passive voice is bad in and of itself. It's only wrong when it's misused.
 

Flawed Creation

Writing again- you are wrong. very wrong.

I speak not from any formal training but from several years as a language fanatic, specifally a grammar freak. i've studied latin and japanese.


the thing doing the action is the SUBJECT. the thing it is done to is the OBJECT. this is the normal, active sentence.

Sharon(subject) passed(active) the book (object)

a sentence does not have both an active and a passive. it is one or the other. furthermore, nouns are not active or passive only verbs are.

when you go passive, the subject of the verb such as "to be passed", the subject of the sentence, is the one that the action is done to. there is no longer an object. if it mentions the person doing the action, then it is as an agent, by menas of which the subject does the passive verb.

the book(subject) was read.(passive)

the book (subject) was read (passive) by sharon (agent) to me (indirect object), but (conjuction), the book (subject) was not interesting (active.)

real sentences, as shown above, are filled with many things.

the key to remmber with the passive is that the subject has something done to it. generally, the heroes are the focus of the story, and i prefer, the hobbit opened the door, to the door was opened by the hobit. on the other hand, sometimes passive is needed. for instance, "the hero was carried through the streets by a cherring throng." this could be "the cheering throng carried the hero through the streets", which would be active, but the passive puts the spotlight where it belongs- on the hero.

none of this is very hard to understand, unlike japanese which does not have a simple active/passive but many shades of difference, plus such wonderful forms as the adversive passive, in which the subject of the sentence is neither the one doing the verb nor the one to whom it is done. these sentences don't translate into english well, but for an example

"i was stolen my suitcase by a robber" I am the subject, the robber is the agent, and the suitcase is the object. this (compared to a normal passive), takes the emphasis off the suitcase and back to me, (who now have no suitcase) where it belongs. be thankful you don't have ot worry about this is english.
 

Jamesaritchie

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Active and passive voice are grammatical terms.

The person, animal, or object that is doing something is active. The one it is being done to is passive.

Passive sentences tend to be weak for three reasons: One they focus on who or what receives the action rather than on who or what does the action, they tend to be wordy, and they are harder to picture in the mind's eye.

In the sentence:

Henry passed the book to Sharon.

It is a sentence that is visual and easy to picture. You picture Henry passing the book. Who does he pass the book to? Sharon.

Henry is the subject of the sentence. He is active: He does something: He passes the book: That puts the sentence squarely in the active voice.

The book is passive: Something is done to the book: It receives the action of the verb: passed. The book is the direct object of the verb.

Sharon is passive: Something is done to her: She receives the book. In fact she is the indirect object of the verb: passed.

The one the action is being done to is only passive if that one happens to be the subject of the sentence, There are no active and passive parts of a sentence that determine anything except for the subject. A sentence is active or passive solely because of the subject of the sentence. If the subject of the sentence is performing the action in the sentence, the sentence is active. If the subject of the sentence is receiving the action of the sentence, the sentence is passive. It really is this simple. There are no degrees of active and passive, no time when part of a sentence is active and part passive.

If the subject of the sentence is performing the action, the whole sentence is active. If the subject of the sentence is receiving the action, the whole sentence is passive.

Anyone having trouble with grammar and punctuation, or many other elements of writing, might want to look at the Purdue University website "OWL." (Online Writign Lab.) This is the page pertaining to active and passive voice. owl.english.purdue.edu/ha...tpass.html
 

reph

"There are no active and passive parts of a sentence that determine anything except for the subject. A sentence is active or passive solely because of the subject of the sentence."

Active and passive voice are verb forms. A verb can be in the active or the passive voice. A subject can't.
 

Pthom

To say that passive constructions are wrong is like saying it is wrong to row a sailboat. There are times when it's a good thing.

Consider:

The Thought Police took Sharon away.
vs.
Sharon was taken away by the Thought Police.

On first glance the first is active, the second passive. But look at the effect each has.

In the first, the subject, Thought Police, is the strong element, since it appears first. Sharon is the object, secondary to the Police. If the story (or scene) is about the Police, I'd pick this example.

In the second example, Sharon is still the object, but she is now in a much stronger position than are the Thought Police. If the scene (or especially the story) is about Sharon, I'd pick this one.

And, I use passive constructions when I want to put the reader's head off the target--for awhile, such as in a mystery. "The blood was left in the pantry." Not active, because we don't know yet, or I don't want the reader to know yet, who did the leaving. Of course, such constructions are a bit easier to take when used in dialogue than in the narrator's voice, but sometimes, even the narrator has reason to use passive voice.
 

Writing Again

Let me see if I understand this correctly:

Flawed Creation says,

Writing again- you are wrong. very wrong.

yet goes on to say,

the key to remmber with the passive is that the subject has something done to it
Which is exactly what I said.

This:

a sentence does not have both an active and a passive. it is one or the other. furthermore, nouns are not active or passive only verbs are.

Is in fact correct, and is what a grammarian would say.

However what makes a verb active or passive is whether the person (noun) performs the action or receives the action.Somehow in "proper grammar" the thing that has no volition, the action, is either active or passive, and the thing that has volition, but which does the action has none.

In any sane conversation the person that does the slapping, the dog that bites, the tree that grows, is active. In any sane conversation the person, place, or thing that receives the action is passive.

Jamesaritchie

The one the action is being done to is only passive if that one happens to be the subject of the sentence, There are no active and passive parts of a sentence that determine anything except for the subject. A sentence is active or passive solely because of the subject of the sentence. If the subject of the sentence is performing the action in the sentence, the sentence is active. If the subject of the sentence is receiving the action of the sentence, the sentence is passive. It really is this simple. There are no degrees of active and passive, no time when part of a sentence is active and part passive.

If the subject of the sentence is performing the action, the whole sentence is active. If the subject of the sentence is receiving the action, the whole sentence is passive
.

This is correct.

However it does not help a person understand what is going on in the sentence: In fact it confuses the issue.

To say that the person receiving the action is not themselves passive, but makes the sentence passive when they are made the subject of it; to further say that they are not passive when receiving the action within the frame of an active sentence; is to wreck mayhem upon the minds of people who are trying to understand what goes on within a sentence.

reph

Active and passive voice are verb forms. A verb can be in the active or the passive voice. A subject can't.

Grammatically this is true and correct.

But what determines whether the verb is to be active or passive?

Whether the noun that is the subject performs the action or receives the action. The verb has no choice in the matter.

I submit to you that I am not "wrong." I merely present the subject in a non traditional way that is more easily understood by those who speak the language, rather than the complex, circumlocutory jargon used by those who normally talk about the language.
 

reph

This discussion has become confusing because some people are using "active" and "passive" in their technical grammatical sense and others are using those words in a descriptive sense to characterize the person or thing that acts (active) or is acted on (passive). Further, some are telling how to identify the active or passive voice and some are telling how to choose between the two when writing.

Grammatically, only verbs can be called active or passive; nouns and pronouns, which are subjects of sentences, aren't. If you're talking about grammar, don't say "The subject is active."

However, if you're explaining that active voice is a good choice for a sentence like "Tom kicked Max" (the alternative being the passive, "Max was kicked by Tom") when a writer wants to emphasize Tom's action, then saying "Tom is active" or "Tom is the actor and Max is the recipient" makes sense. Unfortunately, the word "Tom" is the subject of the sentence. Tom the man is active – he kicks – but the word "Tom," as the grammatical subject, isn't active.

Words and things. Different. Okay?
 

preyer

voice, which is generally what works best for most sitmm, this whole thing has cornfuddled me for a long time. like math, i rely on epiphanies for understanding of these things. fortunately, i think, my mind naturally reverts to a more active uations, caveats attached.

you might have seen me say that i search and destroy all 'was's, and i do, and with minour exception it helps tremendously. i think that's one of the cheapest and easiest ways to knock out a lot of passive sentences (you'll notice, too, that you'll almost always have fewer words in the sentence), although i leave a few in if it reads better or i want a softer tone.

if it's cornfusing to ya, you're not alone. it's good stuff to know, though. i think that was a good point about switching to passive for a paragraph or two after a heavy action scene, which should be active. 'he stood next to the vault when it exploded' is just obviously a lot better than 'he was standing next to the vault when it exploded' when dealing with action, eh?

normally, i'm pretty lax about this stuff for dialogue, except for characters who are generals or tough guys and such. it might be too subtle for a lot of readers, but starting a character off in passive and gradually moving into an active voice as the characters grows stronger and more confident is something i've done on occassion, though i wonder about its effectiveness.

geez, i can't type on this anymore. i'm getting automatic repeating refreshes. i can't even scroll down half the time, and here i'd planned on reading your story excerpt tonight. guess it'll have to wait til tomorrow. this is just a mess.
 

Writing Again

This discussion has become confusing because some people are using "active" and "passive" in their technical grammatical sense and others are using those words in a descriptive sense to characterize the person or thing that acts (active) or is acted on (passive). Further, some are telling how to identify the active or passive voice and some are telling how to choose between the two when writing.

Not so confusing when you accept the position that while the more technical aspects of grammar may or may not be useful in the study of language, it is totally inadequate as a tool for teaching the correct use of language.

Tom the man is active – he kicks – but the word "Tom," as the grammatical subject, isn't active.

Words and things. Different. Okay?

That is the kind of distinction that gives grammarians college degrees and makes simple grammatical use inaccessible to everyday people who use the language correctly.

Ordinary people want to be able to relate the words they use to every day experiences. Grammarians attempt to divorce the discussion of language from every day experience as far as possible so they can prove they are elite.

The real question is whether or not the person, when using the concept, can produce a correct sentence, not whether they can produce the correct distinction between the word and what the word stands for.

Why complicate a relatively simple issue simply to accommodate technical jargon?

In grammar the verb is active or passive.

The verb describes the noun (say Tom) who performs the action. In any sane world anyone can imagine, using any logic you can muster, the thing that performs the action is in fact active -- Except in the technical jargon of grammar..

When you tell people they cannot think of the noun, described by the active verb, as active, and cannot think of the noun that is described by the passive verb as passive, of course they are going to have a problem trying to distinguish which is which. Once you get past that artificial restriction in thinking the differences between the sentences, and how to construct them, become simple.

I personally always vote for Ockham's Razor, the law of parsimony, if you will. The simplest of any two theories that explains the phenomena is the preferable.
 

James D Macdonald

They built that skyscraper in 1934 isn't inherently better or worse than That skyscraper was built in 1934. One may be better or worse for the particular paragraph in the particular chapter that you're working on, but we can't tell without reading it in context.

The active and passive voices are both tools in your toolbox.

You may use one tool more often than another, but when the time comes when you need that second tool, by all means use it.

The suggestion above to read books that you admire and see how that author did things is an excellent one. I wouldn't limit it to one page, though ... what's wrong with analysing a whole chapter? Or a whole book?

Work on your craft.

See also:

Online Writing Lab (OWL).

webster.commnet.edu (with a quiz).

The Writing Center (includes common myths about the passive voice).
 

Writing Again

Thanks for those sites, Uncle Jim, that make the subject clear, simple, and relatively sane.

Gotta love the web. I wish it had been around when I had to wade through the self serving convoluted sludge my teachers handed out when I was a kid.
 

Jamesaritchie

One extremely weasy way to avoid passive writing is simply to use active verbs. Passive verbs are always the hallmark of passive writing, active verbs of active writing. Using active verbs nearly always means you must place the subject in the right place, and must write in active voice, even if you don't know what active voice is.

A writer should be able to identify the subject of a sentence, but even if he can't, he almost sertainly can identify the verb. Just look at that. Active verbs mean active writing, passive verbs mean passive writing.

There are certainly times to use passive sentences, but they should be used by choice, because there's a reason for the sentence to be passive, and not because the writer doesn't know the difference between active and passive, and I think just looking at all the nouns confuses more writers than it helps. Look at the verb.
 

reph

Writing Again said:

Words and things. Different. Okay?
------------------------------------------------------------------------


That is the kind of distinction that gives grammarians college degrees and makes simple grammatical use inaccessible to everyday people who use the language correctly.

Ordinary people want to be able to relate the words they use to every day experiences. Grammarians attempt to divorce the discussion of language from every day experience as far as possible so they can prove they are elite.


Saying that words and things are different serves elitism? Sorry, I don't see it that way. I posted because I thought I could clear up some confusion. People were talking at cross-purposes because they were using the word "subject" in different senses. I'm surprised that you think my post added complexity.
 

Jamesaritchie

Ordinary people want to be able to relate the words they use to every day experiences. Grammarians attempt to divorce the discussion of language from every day experience as far as possible so they can prove they are elite.

I don't agree with this in any way. It has zilch to do with elitism, and ordinary people should know the terms of grammarians as well as anyone. Such terms and uses make things easier, not harder, and they are in no way elitist. They're simply good, useful, helpful tools, and I can't see a reason in the world someone who wants to be a writer wouldn't want to know and use them properly.

This is seventh grade stuff, not elitism. It is everyday experience for anyone who writes. And I don't know how "everyday experience" means in any way that a writer should know what the subject of a sentence is, or what an active or passive verb is.

Everyday experience sure doesn't mean looking at all the nouns in a sentence and trying to determine something that is much easier by using the rules of grammarians?

Nor do I know any way of using "subject" to mean more than one thing when talking about sentences. A sentence has a subject. An active verb means the subject is performing the action. A passive verb means the subject is receiving the action. It really is seventh grade stuff, and hardly elitist.

If the techinical aspect of grammar weren't useful in teaching the correct use of language, there wouldn't be many writers in the world. This is not only how most of us learn the correct use of language, it's been proven over and over to be far and away the simplest and most effective way to learn language.

Simple grammar is NOT inaccesible to simple people who use language correctly. In fact, I don't think I know anyone who uses language very well who hasn't first learned the grammar and its rules first.

People can look at teh nouns all they want, but contrary to what you think, doing so the way you dscribe just confuses most new writers. I've seen it happen over and over and over. You don't have to be an elitist to know how to diagrahm a sentence, to know which word or phrase is the subject, or to know the difference between an active and a passive verb. Seventh graders do this every day in Ebglish class.

Grammar isn't elitist, it simply the best tool for the job, and far easier to learn than a hodge-podge or more confusing rules that truly serve to confuse.

I think those who say grammarians are elitist are most often those who simply refuse to learn the rules, even though doing so isn't at all difficult, and does make things much easier and quicker, including the correct use of language.
 

ChunkyC

Gotta agree wholeheartedly with you here, JamesA. Grammar is fundamental to the structure of the language. Would a surgeon ask a nurse for "that sharp thing there" when he's about to cut into a patient? No way. He knows what the dang thing is called and its proper use.

Same goes for verbs and nouns and how they are put together to form comprehensible sentences. Without grammar, there is no structure.
 

reph

Jamesaritchie wrote: "Nor do I know any way of using "subject" to mean more than one thing when talking about sentences. A sentence has a subject. An active verb means the subject is performing the action. A passive verb means the subject is receiving the action."

A sentence has a subject. Yes, indeed, and that subject is a word. The word doesn't perform the action. The word designates the entity that the sentence says performed an action.

"Tom kicked Max" is a sentence whose subject is the word "Tom." The word "Tom" didn't kick anybody.

Let's not get into refinements like "Tom was bored." "Tom" is the subject there too, and somebody might ask whether being bored is an action.

Does that clarify my earlier post?
 

Flawed Creation

Writing again- yes, you said something very similar to what i said-

however, i feel compelled to object to any explanation involving nouns being active or passive.

passive, as was said, is a voice. a real understanding of grammar is essential for a writer. if i seem a angry about this beyond the import of this discussion, it is because of arguments i have been having with a friend of mine.

we teach a japanese class to some other homeschooled kids. we aren't fluent or in japanese, not close really, but definitely far ahead of our students.

my friend and i both have a natural talent for languages. he is much better than i am at remembering vocabulary, writing japanese characters, and intuitively grasping how a japanese person would say something. he speaks japanese much better than i do. however, i can grasp grammar with comparative ease. Latin conjugations, declension- english moods, participles and gerunds- these things trouble my classmates more than me. unfortunately, i still need to learn vocabulary.


anyway, whenever i try to explain the language in grammatical terms my firewnd object, and repeats "that doesn't help people understand." his argument is that real japanese people don't think in terms of indirect objects, gerunds, and topic markers. they just know to use ni with certain verbs.

however, that is only the way that they can speak it, because growing up in japan gives them an instinctive understanding. in order to allow students to expand their knowledge by themselves, they must understand grammatical terms.



how does this apply to the case at hand? well, when it comes to truly grammatical formal eenglish, ther are comparatively few native speakers. even many americans grow up unfamiliar with the subjunctive, or the passive.

therefore, the only to truly grasp them, for those who haven't used them correctly since childhood, is an understanding of basic grammatical terms.


it isn't that hard. most grammatical terms apply to many languages- the same metalingual vocabulary has seen me through english, lating, greek, japanese, and spanish. A small amount of effort to understand what is meant by voice, mood, tense, case, and so on will make everything to do with language simpler.



it's like the fiasco of the "whole word reading" method. without a grasp of phonics, or grammatical terms, people are limited to rote regurgitation of the sentence patterns they understand.

phonics, that is to say a grasp of grammar, allows much deeper comprehension and more fluent composition.

so please, writing again, don't insist that using the word passive correctly is confusing. it's just somehting everyone needs to leanr sooner or later.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.