Grammar: Passive Voice

On my last assignment a comment was made to me about the use of passive voice. In order to improve my writing I decided to do some research about the subject of passive voice and provide some hints as to stearing away from this mistake.

Step 1: What is passive voice?
Passive voice is defined as a grammatical error pertaining to clarity. That is, there are times when using the passive voice can prevent a reader from understanding what you mean.

Step 2: Identifiying passive voice.
In order to fix this common mistake, one must know how to find it in writing. A common formula to use is: a "to be" verb + passive participle= passive voice
"To be" verbs are words such as "has, had, have, be, been, become, may, might, must, etc."
Now, it is important that when looking for passive voice that one follows the given formula exactly. For instance in the sentence "John is a good student." the word "is" might be a red flag for passive voice, but without the passive participle it is mearly expressing Johns status.
Passive participles are words that end (mostly) with "ed" or are expressed in the past.

Step 3: Fix the mistake.
Once one identifies the problem "voice" the correction process is really simple.
a. Find the verb in the sentence.
b. Ask yourself who or what is performing the action. When you do this, you are identifying the actor in the sentence. Keep in mind that some passive voice sentences omit the real actor, thus one lacks clarity. The actor may need to be incorperated in the sentence.
c.Construct the sentence so the actor performs the action. The key here is to make the action take place in the "now" or present time.

This is an issue that I continually struggle with and hopefully this quick post can help those out there suffering like me. :) For more info please click HERE