The ball was thrown by zombies.
All three restaurants were owned by zombies.
Autumn has been written about in many poems by zombies.
What do these sentences have in common, besides zombies?
Hi, I’m Alejandra from the Purdue OWL, and today we’re going to talk about active versus
passive voice.
The difference between active and passive voice comes down to who or what is doing the
action in a sentence.
We sometimes call this the agent.
When we write a sentence in passive voice, we obscure the agent and focus on the object
of the sentence (the person or thing receiving the action), rather than the agent.
Let’s look at an example: the cat food was eaten by the dog.
What’s doing the action?
The dog.
But what does it sound like?
The cat food.
Here we have an example of passive voice: the agent (the dog) is being obscured.
Let’s rewrite the sentence like this: the dog ate the cat food.
From the start, we see the subject (the dog), performing the action (eating the cat food).
How can you tell whether a sentence is active or passive?
Pay special attention to the “to be” verb.
Sometimes, though not always, the “to be” verb indicates the passive voice because it
puts the action on the object, rather than the subject.
Here’s another helpful trick Professor Rebecca Johnson at USMCU calls the “zombie test.”
Try adding the phrase “by zombies” to the end of a sentence.
If the word “by” followed by a noun fits at the end of a sentence, this often means
the sentence contains passive voice.
Remember those sentences from before?
Let’s look at those again:
How can we rearrange these sentences so they’re in the active voice?
Get the idea?
Good.
Now, here’s a question: what if the subject does not appear in the sentence?
For instance: “throughout the movie, Spiderman is seen rescuing people in danger.”
Here, we have an implied subject.
The verb “is seen,” refers to someone or something seeing, right?
So, who’s doing that?
A member of the audience, of course.
Rewrite this sentence with an agent performing the action and the sentence looks like this:
throughout the movie, the audience sees Spiderman rescue people in danger.
Get the difference?
It all depends on where you want the emphasis.
If you want to emphasize Spiderman, it’s perfectly fine to use the passive voice, but
if you want to make it active, that’s when you need to add the subject.
When trying to convert a sentence from passive voice to active voice, look out for an implied
subject.
Pay attention to the who or what is doing the action, even if the sentence does not
directly state it.
Think of yourself as a detective, looking for the agent.
One more thing: instructors in some fields may prefer passive voice over active voice.
Because passive voice emphasizes the action rather than the subject performing the action,
many sciences prefer passive voice for lab reports and instruction manuals.
For example, here’s a sentence written in passive voice: the experiment was conducted
by marine biologists.
In this sentence, we emphasize the experiment, rather than the people conducting it.
See the difference?
Make sure you know the expectations for writing in your field (know your audience, in other
words).
So, in closing, look out for zombies in your writing!
Well, not exactly.
But you get the idea.
Thanks for watching!