Danielle Hohn
9/27/04
Passive Voice/ Construction
There are two types of voice construction, active and passive. Active voice construction is when we have a subject (agent or actor) performing an action. In passive voice the subject is being acted upon. Use of passive voice is known to cause sentences to be loose, indirect and wordy.
Example:
Active: Jan curled her hair.
Passive: The hair was curled by Jan.
Passive voice construction usually includes a “to be” verb such as (am, is, are, was, were…etc) followed by a past participle such as “by”. Passive voice is only useful when the writer wants to draw attention to the action and not the performer. Active voice is usually preferred over passive.