It's not always necessary, but it often forces you to improve your writing and think harder about what you're trying to say. When you write a passive sentence, stop and try to rewrite it as an active sentence. In most cases, an active verb makes a sentence more forceful and easier to follow. Try to use active sentences in most other circumstances. "The doctors at County Hospital delivered our son Robert last night!" puts the focus on the doctors, whom Uncle Joe probably doesn't care about. "Our son Robert was delivered at County Hospital last night!" tells your family the news it wants to hear right away.The electronics store staff is repairing my phone." My phone is being repaired." is more useful than "I can't text right now. X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source Here are additional examples: The active version of this sentence "Someone created this cave painting thousands of years ago," adds unnecessary words (someone) and makes the topic of the sentence ("this cave painting") harder to find. It focuses the attention right on what you want to talk about, the cave painting. For example, "This cave painting was created thousands of years ago." is a good passive sentence. Use passive sentences when the "doer" of the action is unimportant or unknown. "Their own teacher" is the agent of the passive sentence. Who had treated "none of them" so badly before? Their own teacher had treated "none of them" so badly before. "None of them" is the subject of the sentence. What had been so badly treated? None of them had been so badly treated. If it makes the sentence easier to follow, you can treat the verb as "had been so badly treated." This sentence might sound confusing because the writer has added some adverbs in the middle of the verb! The full verb is " had been (.) treated". "None of them had been so badly treated by their own teacher before.".To find the agent, if there is one in the sentence, rephrase the sentence to ask "Who is (verb)ing? X Research source Here's a difficult example, step by step: Find the verb and ask "What (verb)?" to find the subject. ![]() ![]() Remember, a passive sentence is about a subject that something is happening to.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |