Eli5 How does passive/active voice work???
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1. I **am being really** passive right now so I **can** show you how **I’m** using **very** few strong verbs that make this sentence long and not really **do** much.
2. I spoke actively on Reddit today when I explained how strong verbs make better sentences.
In high school we had a teacher require us to write an essay in 100% active voice. Best lesson ever. Sometimes it’s difficult to be active and sometimes you can use passive voice as a tool for tone. But in general, active voice makes quicker, shorter, more direct sentences. They are easier to read. There’s more knowledge gained from reading a sentences that uses specific verbs and adjectives in a smaller amount of space. “Dead words” like “Really” and “very” are not technically passive but could be included because they don’t add much to what you’re trying to say so they’re part of poor writing.
I imagine you’re asking because you’ve heard that writers should avoid passive voice. Why is that the prevailing wisdom? Firstly, to answer your question, passive voice is when the subject is acted upon by the verb. Here’s an example:
**Echoing down the hallway was the woman’s scream.**
So what’s wrong with this sentence? Firstly, the reader cannot form a picture in their mind of what is happening until the end of the sentence. This creates distance between the reader and the action which is the opposite of what a writer wants to do.
Compare the above sentence with the following one:
**The woman’s scream echoed down the hallway.**
See how much better that is? The reader immediately gets a picture in their mind and they are drawn into the action. Plus, it’s less wordy and moves the story along better.
Is passive voice always bad? No, it has a place in storytelling. For example, “Grandma got ran over by a reindeer” is passive, but in this instance it’s superior to “The reindeer ran over grandma.” But in most cases passive voice does more harm than good.
Active voice–you doing something.
Passive voice–a description of something happening to you or that you saw, even if its you taking the action.
Active–I jumped onstage and slapped Chris in the mouth.
Passive–I found myself on the stage where Chris was slapped in the mouth by me.
Active voice: “I ate chocolate”
Passive voice: “the chocolate was eaten by me”
Active voice someone does something and passive voice is when something is done by someone
Active voice: Noun does verb
Passive voice: Verb is done by noun.
Ex — The dog chased the mail man is active voice. The mail man was chased by the dog is passive voice.
If you can add “by zombies” to the end of the sentence and it works grammatically then you’ve got the passive tense.
“the car was stolen [by zombies]” = makes sense grammatically therefore passive tense
“someone stole the car [by zombies]” = doesn’t make sense grammatically so active tense.
Obviously it doesn’t have to be zombies, it’s just what I was taught!
Active: Police Attack Crowd at Downtown Protest, Injuring Several
Passive: Protestors Injured in Downtown Kerfuffle
Passive voice is a subtle way of not acknowledging the party(s) involved in an action.
For example, the media frequently talks about how a “woman was raped” (passive) as opposed to “a man raped a woman” (active).
In passive voice the subject is missing. It usually is accomplished by “is” or “were” or “was” followed by a past tense verb.
They were followed by the dogs… The dogs followed them.
The hotdog was eaten by the cat. The cat ate the hotdog.
Jane is dedicated to running. Jane dedicates herself to running.
Active: “I accidentally added a bug into the main routine of our app. I’m sorry about that.” /NeverHeard
Passive: “Somehow, a bug was added to the main routine in this latest version.” /MuchBetter
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