Eli5 How does passive/active voice work???
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If you can add “by zombies” without it sounding weird its passive
eg “the cookies were eaten” “the cookies were eaten by zombies” =passive
“I ate the cookies” “I ate the cookies by zombies” =active
Active provides the person doing the action while passive only provides the action
Subject/verb proximity. You want the subject and the verb to be as close to each other as possible to write in the active voice.
Be aware! Some “software systems” that read and analyze grammar will sometimes “complain” or flag “passive voice” as “needing to be re-written” – even though it is not only acceptable in some circumstances, it may be required for precision or bias. For example, if you are writing a science paper – you didn’t do ***it*** (and maybe not “he/she/it”), but ***it*** happened to correlate with an action.
Hopefully that software can now be configured to mitigate that annoying conclusion.
It’s just a matter of order.
In an active sentence, the **SUBJECT** (somebody/thing doing something) comes before the *VERB* (what they’re doing). (“**John** *threw* the ball.”)
In a passive sentence, the *VERB* goes first and the **SUBJECT** either follows (“A ball *was thrown* by **John**”) or is excluded (“A ball *was thrown*.”)
Usually the active voice is better because it’s generally shorter and stronger, but there are some exceptions like being polite or when you care more about the OBJECT (the receiver of action), i.e. “I’ve been shot!”
In broad terms:
Active- X did Y to Z.
Passive- Y was done to Z by X.
Active has the subject causing an action
Passive has the subject receiving an action from another party
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