In most cases,
use the active voice of verbs instead of the passive voice. The passive voice
moves the object of the verb to a superior position as the subject of the
sentence, relegating the proper subject to an inferior role.
Example:
Jewelry is often stolen by
burglars. [passive]
Burglars often steal jewelry. [active]
Passive forms
often use the verb was:
Oxygen
was discovered in 1774 by Joseph
Priestly. [passive]
Joseph Priestly discovered oxygen
in 1774. [active]
In the examples
above, the proper subject—the doer of the action—often gets lost in the
shuffle. Or, you might say, the actor has been removed from the action.
The active voice
is almost invariably more vigorous, direct, and vivid and therefore keeps the
action in sharper focus for the reader.
You don’t have
to change every passive construction to an active one. For instance, various
stock locutions such as The project was
abandoned and The Romans were
defeated are perfectly acceptable.
Also, the
passive voice is useful when the doer of the action is unknown or unimportant:
The lock was broken sometime after four o’clock. [Who broke the lock is
unknown]
In 1899, a peace conference was held at The Hague. [This sentence
comes from an essay by E.B. White. In this case, the doers of the action—the
holders of the conference—are unimportant to White’s point.]
Paul Thayer
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