News

Icon for miamioh.eduMiami University · May 3, 2024

Active and Passive Voice

Two TVs were stolen ["be" helping verb but main verb ending in "en"] from the local gas stations last night. To switch from active voice to passive voice, place the doer of the action into the subject position and remove the passive "be" helping verb.
Icon for www.bbc.co.ukBBC · Jun 18, 2023

What is a passive verb?

When the subject of a sentence isn't doing something, the verb is passive. On the other hand, a sentence is active when the subject performs the verb (action). For example, in this sentence the ...
Icon for www.sfu.caSimon Fraser University · Nov 18, 2021

Passive Voice and Raising

The passive voice is the marked voice: [+Passive], and the active voice is the unmarked or default voice: [-Passive]. Virtually every verb may occur in the active voice--indeed some of them must: 1. John ate the potato. 2. Some birds are flying.
Icon for www.unr.eduunr.edu · Oct 25, 2024

How to Use Tenses within Scientific Writing

In the methods section one would use past tense due to what they have done was in the past. It has been debated whether one should use active or passive voice. The scientific journal Nature states that one should use active voice as to convey the concepts ...
Icon for www.nature.comNature · Nov 29, 2021

Effective Writing

Use your current topic — that is, what you are writing about — as the grammatical subject of your sentence (see Verbs: Choosing between active and passive voice). When writing a complex ...
Icon for www.msn.comMSN · 15d

The Great Passive Voice Panic: Why Everyone (Even Grammar Experts) Gets It Wrong

Active voice would give you a sentence like ... And, when given the opportunity, Orwell chose to use passive verbs 20 percent of the time in his essay “Politics and the English language.”
Icon for www.brandeis.eduBrandeis University · Nov 19, 2021

Active and Passive Voice

We refer to a sentence as being in the "active voice" when the subject is performing the action of the sentence (the verb). A sentence is in the "passive voice" when the subject is being acted upon by the verb. For example, the following sentence is in the ...
Icon for www.bbc.co.ukBBC · Aug 12, 2020

What is a passive verb?

When the subject of a sentence isn't doing something, the verb is passive. On the other hand, a sentence is active when the subject performs the verb (action). For example, in this sentence the ...
Icon for www.sfu.caSimon Fraser University · Nov 6, 2021

Passive Voice

The voice of the verb is distinct from its tense. Don't confuse the passive voice with the past tense. (Sentence 2 happens to be in the past tense, but 3 is not; both 2 and 3 are in the passive voice.) 2. The passive voice uses more words than the active ...