Academic Writing: The Passive Voice: Why use it?
Passive voice often creates unclear, less direct, wordy sentences, whereas active voice creates clearer, more concise sentences. To change a sentence from passive to active voice, determine who or what performs the action, and use that person or thing as the subject of the sentence. Examples. PASSIVE VOICE: My first trip abroad will always be remembered by me. PASSIVE VOICE: My first trip.
The past participle in a passive can act like an adjective. e.g. The essay was thoroughly researched. This can refer to the fact that the essay had been thought about carefully, or to the action that the student did when writing the essay. If you want to tell if a past participle is being used in a passive construction or as an adjective, see if you need to add the words by and a noun, or.
About the Passive Voice Detector. The passive voice detector automatically detects passive voice in a block of text (now with the aid of zombies!). When a sentence is written in passive voice, the subject is being acted upon rather than doing the acting. Passive voice is often avoided by professional writers because it can make the sentence needlessly longer, more complicated and unclear as.
Active voice is used for most non-scientific writing. Using active voice for the majority of your sentences makes your meaning clear for readers, and keeps the sentences from becoming too complicated or wordy. Even in scientific writing, too much use of passive voice can cloud the meaning of your sentences.
Writing Prompt: To use the passive voice in English, you need to know the past participle of the main verb in your sentence. Though it is a good idea to use the active voice whenever possible, some styles of writing do use the passive voice. Review the rules for constructing a sentence in the passive voice.Then write a short obituary (a mini biography about someone who died) using the passive.
The key use of passive voice is to switch the order of the subject and object. It is important to have the correct backwards-linking information at the beginning of the sentence. This may require passive voice. Conclusion Generally, I prefer active voice, but I think the passive voice has its place in scientific writing. The best thing to do is.
The passive voice lends an impersonal tone, which is perceived to be formal, but can make the text more wordy and difficult to understand, especially when used in long sentences. Until recently, this tone was considered favorable for scientific writing and authors were advised to strictly avoid using the active voice, especially the use of “I” and “we” in their academic research papers.