Active and abstract: The germ theory of disease initially eluded the medical community.Both active and passive voice can convey any kind of action, provided there’s an agent and a recipient involved: Solely for expressing abstract or “uneventful” actions.Passive and tentative: This thesis should probably be read by anyone interested in the emerging uses of nanolaminates.Passive and assertive: This thesis must be read by anyone interested in the emerging uses of nanolaminates.Active and tentative: Those with an interest in the emerging uses of nanolaminates might consider reading this thesis.Active and assertive: Those with an interest in the emerging uses of nanolaminates must read this thesis.Passive voice can be diffident or assertive, as can active voice: It’s therefore important to be able to differentiate passive voice from these other qualities. Passive voice sometimes gets confused with a number of other, unrelated properties of writing-none of them inherently undesirable. If a verb does not have these components, it’s not in passive voice.įor practice spotting passive voice in your writing, see the GWC video tutorial Recognizing Passive Voice and accompanying infographic. The past participle is a fixed form of the verb used to create various tenses just look for a verb that appears to be in the past tense.Įvery passive-voice verb will have these two components. The past participle of some verb (“crossed”).A form of the verb “be” or “get” (in our example, “was”).In particular, every passive-voice verb has two telltale features: the verb changes to reflect these new roles.the agent performing the action appears in a prepositional phrase, after the word “by” and.the entity receiving the action is the subject of the sentence.That’s because, when a clause is in passive voice, Note the crisscrossing positions of the sentence elements. In 1776, the Delaware was crossed by Washington. the recipient of the action comes after the verb, as the object ('the Delaware').the verb tells us what the agent is doing ('crossed') and.the agent-whoever or whatever is performing the action-is the subject ('Washington').In 1776, Washington crossed the Delaware. That said, passive voice does have some legitimate purposes, and it’s often confused with other grammatical characteristics, such as the past tense being able to differentiate between passive voice and other constructions and knowing when and why to avoid it will give you much greater control over the clarity and rhetorical effect of your writing.Īctive and passive voice are an issue only in sentences in which one entity-the agent-is doing something-the action-to another entity-the recipient.Īctive voice is the standard subject–verb–object sentence structure: Use of passive voice is among the most frequently invoked sentence-level criticisms, and with good reason: the essential components of a clause-the subject(s) and verb(s)-exist precisely to tell us who is doing what, and the passive voice can undermine that function, obscuring what entity is responsible for what action.

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Active voice verbs