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Active Vs Passive Voice In Self Editing by Anthony White
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Active Vs Passive Voice In Self Editing |
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Education
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To write well, you want your words to be tight yet flowing. Many writers lose this flow by using the passive as opposed to active voice in their writing. Most people do not even realize that there are two different voices to write with and so miss this when they are doing their self-editing. We all know that a sentence has a subject and a verb and usually an object. Basically, verbs have two forms or voices- active or passive. When the verb is in active voice, the subject is doing the action and the object receives the action of the verb. When the verb is in the passive voice, something is being done to the subject so the subject receives the action of the verb rather than the object. A simple example of a verb in the active voice is: Rick patted the dog. Here, Rick (the subject) is the one doing the action when he patted (the verb) the dog (the object). Using the same example but putting it into the passive voice: The dog was patted by Rick. Here, the dog (the object) rather than the subject (Rick) becomes the focus of the sentence and it is the subject that is being acted upon. In the two examples above, the active voice is more direct, and therefore clearer and tighter while the passive voice weakens and draws out the sentence. The fewer words you can use to say the same thing, the tighter your writing. Depending on what is said, the passive voice even can make the author appear hesitant or uncertain of what they are writing about. On the other hand, the active voice is stronger, letting us know who is doing the action. It does not allow the reader to misinterpret what is happening so it is clearer. Without getting too grammatically complex, passive voice verbs have two parts: some form of the verb "to be" and a past participle form of the action verb. In the example above, was is the "to be" verb and patted is the past particle of the verb "to pat". As you can see, this is not as strong a way of saying something. However, there may be times when it is totally appropriate to use the passive voice in your writing and is actually the best way to say what you want to say. For example, most scientific or technical writing uses passive voice because it takes out the "self" from the work. (I mixed the two solutions together vs. The two solutions were mixed together). Since technical writing needs to be opinion free, the passive voice gives the option to the writer to write without attributing the actions to themselves. Another time when you may want to use passive voice is if the action of the sentence is more important than the subject, or you want to focus the readers on the object rather than the subject. But remember, using the passive voice gives up responsibility of the action taken, which can be a cop-out as a writer. When you are self editing, keep your verb voices in mind. Although both voices are handy and essential at times, the passive voice involves more words which can affect the flow of your writing. You can really tighten up your work if you edit your passive voice into active voice whenever you have a choice and it is appropriate to do so. Have fun! dissertation writing service
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