Passive-aggressive Part 2

If you haven’t already read the first part, go do that now. We’ll wait for you.

So, how do you identify passive voice? First, look for the actors and actions in the sentence. If you can’t pick them right out, you’re most likely looking passive voice.

Here’s another quick and easy test for passive voice: Look for any form of the verb to be in connection with another verb. Some different forms of to be are:

• to be ("Well, yeah.")
• am
• are
• is
• was
• were
• will be
• has been

When you find any of these, look for a "by" phrase, which identifies the actor. If you find it, you can almost always turn the sentence around and make it active. Remember that the actor isn’t always clearly identified. Sometimes it’s only implied or assumed.

Here are a few passive-active examples:

Passive: The ground was blanketed by snow.
Active: Snow blanketed the ground.

Passive: A foolproof method for roadrunners to be captured by hungry coyotes has been developed by Acme researchers. (Note: This one is twice as passive—note the "to be" and "has been".)
Active: Acme researchers have developed a foolproof method for hungry coyotes to capture roadrunners.

Here’s an example from a newsletter sent out by our city government, in an article about emergency response plans in the public schools: "What we found when reviewing the existing response plans was that the different buildings weren’t using the same terminology."
It’s that "What we found was…" structure. The actors here, the people doing the finding, are right up at the front of the sentence, but grammatically speaking, they’re not the subject of the sentence. Making them the subject by saying "we found…" is simpler and more direct. In this case it could be "When we reviewed the existing response plans, we found that the different buildings weren’t using the same terminology."

In the same newsletter we find this: "Each school building is expected to practice the various scenarios found in the plan on a regular basis." This one is a gem, with problems like the school buildings practicing a scenario (Is that before the buildings practice the trumpet, or after?), the excessive wordiness of "on a regular basis" when "regularly" works just as well with three fewer words, and the frequency of this "regular basis" being undefined and possibly meaning anything from every hour on the hour to once a decade. But let’s focus on the passive voice of "Each school building is expected…" Expected by whom? School district officials? The police department? The article leaves the public not knowing who is accountable for ensuring the schools are following the new plan. When it comes to the safety of my kids, I want to know those details.

Don’t become overzealous and engage in search-and-destroy missions, wiping out passive voice wherever it lurks. For instance, you’ll use it when you want to simply describe a state of being, like "It’s hot today." There may be times when you don’t know or don’t care who performed the action, or you don’t want to point fingers. This is where it can get dicey. Remember what I said about the "exonerative passive?" If you’re writing a letter to someone (perhaps to a customer or your boss or your boss’s boss) who has screwed up in some way, you might decide that some courteous, diplomatic weasel words will suit the sitiation perfectly. On the other hand, with some people, an unambiguous "You blew it" might serve better.

In other cases, you may decide to use passive sentence because of what you want to emphasize. Going back to our poor wrecked car, perhaps you are writing about it, and not about the accident or the sot who plowed it into a tree. It that case, you would write "The car was wrecked by a drunk driver," because you want the reader to focus on the car, and not the driver.