What the hell the passive voice is (2018)
[untwittered]<p>All right, gather &#x27;round, all you #AmWriting clowns! Since she just got ANOTHER email with a writer&#x2F;editor type misidentifying it, today Aunt Bloody Rose is gonna learn your ass what the hell the passive voice ACTUALLY IS!<p>There is a lot of confusion. Don&#x27;t worry; it&#x27;s not your fault! It&#x27;s all the fault of grammar lunatics Strunk &amp; White and their stupid-ass Elements of Style, in which they say &quot;avoid passive voice&quot; and then give you a bunch of &quot;examples,&quot; 75% of which do not contain passive voice<p>I think it stems from the connotations of &quot;active&quot; and &quot;passive.&quot; Passive is boring, right? Active is, well, dynamic! Avoid boring sentences! That&#x27;s good advice!<p>BUT! Just because it&#x27;s boring, doesn&#x27;t mean a sentence is in passive voice. &quot;Passive voice&quot; refers very specifically to something in linguistics!<p>Put simply, * passive voice is when you turn the patient of a transitive verb into the subject of a sentence. *<p>So, to contrast:
&quot;Weasels ripped my flesh&quot; is active voice. The weasels are the  agents (the verb-ers), AND they&#x27;re the subjects. &quot;My flesh&quot; is the patient (the  verb-ee).
&quot;My flesh was ripped by weasels&quot; is passive. &quot;My flesh&quot; is still the patient, but now it&#x27;s the subject<p>Note that this can be a USEFUL construction. Not just because changing the subject changes the focus, but because you can actually drop the agent entirely from a passive construction. (&quot;Doctor! Help! My flesh was ripped!&quot; You don&#x27;t need to explain who did the ripping.)<p>If you don&#x27;t know who did the action, it&#x27;s useful, too. &quot;Nurse! Help me out here. This extremely manly guy&#x27;s flesh was ripped.&quot; Doctor doesn&#x27;t know by what, but it doesn&#x27;t matter, except insofar as he&#x27;d like a specimen to test for rabies probably<p>Now, as noted above, you can re-add the agent in with a &quot;by&quot; phrase. But it is optional. Often in this case, you&#x27;re changing topicalization.
In English, the topic is usually the subject of a sentence. Then you comment on the topic with the &quot;predicate.&quot;<p>&quot;Weasels ripped my flesh&quot; - the topic is weasels. You&#x27;re commenting on their action.
&quot;My flesh was ripped by weasels&quot; - the topic is your flesh. You&#x27;re commenting on the horrible ordeal it went through.<p>So! That&#x27;s pretty much it. That&#x27;s the passive voice. BUT I&#x27;M NOT DONE, DANGIT<p>Obviously, this is a lot simpler than people make it out to be. But as I mentioned, it&#x27;s easily confused with other constructions. I think this is partly to do with English using &quot;to be&quot; (or sometimes &quot;to get&quot;) in part of the passive construction<p>The English copula (&quot;to be,&quot; &quot;is,&quot; &quot;am,&quot; &quot;are,&quot; &quot;was,&quot; &quot;were,&quot; &quot;been,&quot; etc.) is an incredibly busy critter. I can&#x27;t possibly encapsulate it all. Look at this behemoth on Wiktionary:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wiktionary.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;be" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wiktionary.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;be</a><p>But there are a couple of things to note. First, &quot;being&quot; is not generally considered particularly dynamic, so people think of it as &quot;passive.&quot; (&quot;The weasels were hungry&quot; doesn&#x27;t really have the weasels DOING much. &quot;I am a manly guy&quot; likewise isn&#x27;t very DO-y.)<p>That, plus the copula&#x27;s use in other verb constructions (&quot;the weasels WERE ripping my flesh&quot; &quot;there sure WERE a lot of weasels&quot; &quot;going into the weasel pit WAS like diving into a meat grinder&quot;) seems to be what confuses people into thinking they&#x27;re passive voice<p>And note that ALL of these constructions are useful, depending on what you want to say and what part of the action you feel is important to focus on!<p>But--and in this I will agree with editors--it&#x27;s also possible that there&#x27;s a more dynamic way to say something. Just because a sentence has no passive constructions doesn&#x27;t mean it might not be boring!<p>But please, PLEASE, when you comment on a sentence, make sure you&#x27;re not misidentifying WHY it&#x27;s a problem. &quot;Passive voice&quot; is not shorthand for &quot;limp and boring.&quot; It&#x27;s a specific thing! And useful!<p>Okay, That is my thread. I will now open the floor for questions. The first answer is: no, &quot;weasel&quot; does NOT look like a word anymore. Thanks for asking!<p>(Addendum: If you want to see a hilarious grammar fight, Google &quot;fifty years of stupid grammar advice.&quot; Geoff K. Pullum wrote an anti-tribute to Strunk&amp;White on their 50th anniversary, and BOY the grammar snob were mad. SO MANY REBUTTALS)<p>I just realized that I never explained what a transitive verb IS! Put simply, it&#x27;s a verb with at least two participants: an agent (do-ER; the one acting) and a patient (do-EE; the one acted upon)<p>&gt; Put simply, * passive voice is when you turn the patient of a transitive verb into the subject of a sentence. *<p>In &quot;Aliens attacked New York,&quot; aliens are the agent and New York is the patient.
Contrast with intransitive verbs, which only have one participant. &quot;Mario jumps,&quot; for example, only needs Mario doing a thing.
It can get more complex, of course, but that&#x27;s the basics!<p>Also fun: verbs can overlap depending on context. You can make &quot;eat&quot; work either way. &quot;Hannibal is eating&quot; (intransitive) versus &quot;Hannibal is eating PEOPLE OH NO&quot;(transitive)<p>But you can only passivize the transitive sentence (&quot;People are being eaten [by Hannibal], oh no!&quot;). The intransitive has no patient, so there&#x27;s no way to turn the nonexistent patient into a subject, and we remain blissfully ignorant of Hannibal&#x27;s diet<p>ANOTHER CLARIFICATION: Neither of these sample sentences is passive voice<p>&gt; But there are a couple of things to note. First, &quot;being&quot; is not generally considered particularly dynamic, so people think of it as &quot;passive.&quot; (&quot;The weasels were hungry&quot; doesn&#x27;t really have the weasels DOING much. &quot;I am a manly guy&quot; likewise isn&#x27;t very DO-y.)<p>[&#x2F;untwittered]