1. The voice of the verb is distinct from its tense. Don't confuse the passive voice with the past tense. (Sentence 2 happens to be in the past tense, but 3 is not; both 2 and 3 are in the passive ...

The passive voice: despised by teachers, maligned by editors, and misunderstood by almost everyone. For over a century, this grammatical construction has been the bogeyman of English writing ...

In English, we can express sentences in two different ways: active voice and passive voice. The active voice is used when the focus is on the subject (or agent) of the main verb. This is the ...

Passive]. Virtually every verb may occur in the active voice--indeed some of them must: 1. John ate the potato. 2. Some birds are flying. 3. Henry resembles Hank's father. The passive voice is ...

a. Thirteen people were injured by a tornado in Florida. b. I was robbed. Summary of Use of the Passive Voice 1. To keep discourse topics in the subject position of sentences. 2. To avoid mentioning ...

Writing in the active voice makes the meaning clear while keeping sentences from becoming complicated and wordy. Sentences using passive voice are not necessarily wrong, just less effective than ...

From grade school onwards most everybody is taught that sentences in the active voice are the end-all and be-all of English, and that sentences in the passive voice should be avoided like the plague.