An Eye For The Passive Voice

This is a short study on developing an eye for the passive voice. First off, what is the passive voice? Simply put: it’s when the subject of your sentence receives the action of the sentence instead of performing it. It leads to slower and less engaging writing, and we all do it, all the time, so it’s best to learn how to spot it.

Here’s an example:
passive: The road was crossed by the chicken.
active: The chicken crossed the road.

A simple way to start identifying these passive phrases is to look for the verb ‘to be’ (is / was / were are / etc.) This is a good indicator that you could rewrite the line in a more active way. This isn’t a steadfast rule. It doesn’t always need to be changed, but it does always need to be considered.

TO DO:

Pick some sample of your work (something you like), maybe a paragraph or maybe a page. Go through and highlight or circle each sample of the verb ‘to be’ (is / was / were are / etc.). Go through and look at all the versions of “to be” that you highlighted/circled. Think about whether each of these verbs needed to be “to be” or whether this verb choice is actually impeding the use of a more active verb. Now, rewrite the section.

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