课程: Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Write in active voice

课程: Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

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Write in active voice

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- Active sentences improve reading comprehension which means your writing is easier for readers to understand. In simple terms, an active sentence includes the person or thing that's doing something and keeps them in the subject position in the sentence. Lola walks dogs is an active sentence. We know what's happening, dog walking, and we know who's doing it, Lola. And she is at the start of the sentence in what's called the subject position. Seeing a verb of being, like is, are, and was, can be a sign that you're writing in passive voice. The dogs are being walked is a passive sentence. We know what's happening. It's still dog walking, but now we don't know who's doing it. Those verbs of being aren't always a sign of passive voice. For example, Lola is going to the pet store tonight has the verb is, but it's still active because we know what's happening and who's doing it. And Lola is, again, in the subject position at the beginning of the sentence. But if you find that your writing has lots of sentences with verbs of being, you might have a problem with passive voice. A quick and dirty tip for identifying passive sentences is to see if you can add the phrase by zombies to the sentence. The dogs are being walked by zombies. You could change that to active voice by writing zombies are walking the dogs. Here's another passive sentence. The dogs have been fed. Again, we don't know who's doing the feeding. We can add by zombies to the end, and it still makes sense. So again, that's your sign. It's in passive voice. To make it active, we add an active subject and a strong verb. Zombies fed the dogs. We know what's happening, feeding, we know who's doing it, the zombies, and they are in the subject position. Now, you might be asking yourself, "What's so wrong about passive sentences?" Well, passive sentences get boring and they're actually harder for readers to understand. But if you make the person taking action, the subject of the sentence, and swap in active verbs, like walked, ran, washed and snuggled, instead of is, was, and have been, you'll keep your reader's interest, and they'll understand you better too.

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