I have just finished arguing with a would-be writer who a) is convinced that passive voice is evil and must be avoided at all times, and b) has, it turns out, no idea at all what passive voice actually is.
I am therefore going to rant.
Passive voice is not when something has been allowed to happen, nor is it a literary device, nor is it any sentence containing “was” or “were.” Passive voice is a grammatical term, not a literary device. Passive voice is a specific type of sentence structure, in which the subject of the sentence is acted upon by someone or something else, rather than acting: “The time was given to her by me,” is passive voice; so is “She was given the time by me.” But “I was giving her the time” is active voice (past progressive tense, to be precise), and “Giving her the time,” is a gerund phrase.
And the active voice is not ALWAYS preferable. It depends on the emphasis one wants in the sentence. If you are writing a simple descriptive paragraph, then the simple active-voice sentence: “Her dog had saved her life” is probably what you want. If, however, you are writing a paragraph in which the protagonist is considering the purpose of her life and musing about her past, then “Her life had been saved by her dog” may be exactly what you want, because in context, “Her life” is the important thing, the thing she is thinking about, the thing that requires emphasis, because that (not the dog or the event) is the focus of the paragraph.
Passive voice can be absolutely necessary in a sub-clause. For instance: “The ambassador, having been insulted, returned home and persuaded his country to declare war.” That clause, “having been insulted,” is passive voice; you can tell because you can add in the “by whom” and the phrase still makes sense. And you need that clause to be passive voice in order to keep the subject the same for both the main sentence and the subclause, especially if it isn’t important who did the insulting. (“The ambassador, who had been insulted, returned home…” also uses passive voice in the clause, by the way.)
Sometimes you really want passive voice for structural reasons. “The necklace had been stolen four times: once by the dwarves, twice by the elves, and once by the Queen of Siam.” has to be passive voice in order to get that nice parallel structure. You certainly could say “The dwarves stole the necklace once; the elves stole it twice; and the Queen of Siam stole it once” but the sentence doesn’t read as well and loses the build-up.
Finally, there are times when nothing but passive voice will do, and that’s all there is to it:
“‘He was murdered!’ the detective said.
“By whom?”
“We don’t know. The only clue is this manuscript, which contains no trace of passive voice. You don’t suppose…”
I actually *have* come across the ‘every sentence using ‘was’ is passive voice’ thing in the past, and it boggled me – I always thought that belonged in the realm of legend. Who teaches these things?
I don’t think any real teachers teach the “any sentence with ‘was’ is passive voice” error. It’s just one of those learning shortcuts that get passed around on playgrounds and in cafeterias…and on the Internet. It’s a really appealing rule-of-thumb because it’s easy-easy to remember and easy to apply. Unfortunately, it’s also wrong.
Thank you for the rant. Passive voice is something that is often warned against, but nailing down a definition is HARD.
The linguistics blog Language Log often has articles on this very subject (both your points, a and b). The authors there sometimes wonder what, if anything, people do mean by “passive voice”, if they don’t mean the actual passive voice. (They’ve suggested “vague about agency”—i.e. not making it clear who or what was responsible for events.) Looking through examples, though, I’m not sure people actually mean anything definite at all. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to even be about the writing, but seems to be just a way of being rude about the writer.
Hear, hear!
I think it always bears repeating that some of these supposedly hard and fast grammar rules (like Thou shalt not split an infinitive, Thou shalt not end a sentence with a preposition, Thou shalt not use passive voice…) are really just stylistic recommendations.
Yes! It doesn’t help that Microsoft Word’s grammar check marks every instance of passive voice as *wrong*. This irritates me to no end. “But I *want* to use passive voice there! Passive voice is an acceptable use of the English language!”
Also, I now desperately want to know why the dwarves, the elves, and the Queen of Siam are all after the same necklace 🙂
Nice… Expanding on your point about emphasis, this means that sometimes the passive voice is not only the better, but also the stronger way to phrase something. This inverts the stereotype of the weak and floppy passive, which is supposed to be the main reason for avoiding it to begin with.
This hit me in my teens, whilst reading Roger Zelazny’s _Nine Princes in Amber_. The protagonist has just been captured after leading a failed coup against his elder brother. Elder brother gloats, protag has nothing to lose, so defies him as obnoxiously as possible before being dragged off to terrible fate. The last line before this occurs is:
“I spat, and was beaten.”
Which is about ten times stronger than, “I spat, and the guards beat me.” Shorter, quite literally punchier, matched with the misery and sheerly passive helplessness of his situation – and, of course, perfectly conveying that his guards scarcely even register on him, except as extensions of his hated brother. In five words.
I read, and was educated.
I keep hearing about `Nine Princes in Amber’ one of these days I’m going to actually read it. (Sounds interesting from your description.)
Odette:
Thou shalt not split an infinitive, Thou shalt not end a sentence with a preposition, Thou shalt not use passive voice…
ITYM “It is wrong to gratuitously split infinitives, passive voice shall not be used, and thou shalt not use a preposition to end a sentence with.”
On a tangent (since Gabrielle brought up spell-check) it also hates old English. You should see the red lines when I try to quote Shakespeare. 🙂
Spell-checking can be useful, once it’s properly trained; what is really pernicious is the so-called grammar-checker. Unless you’re looking for laughs.
But boy, don’t try to use either if you have a character, or especially a narrator, who doesn’t happen to use Standard English. The amount of time you spend hitting “skip” is just too much of a pain, IMO.
Hello~
Thank you for that, even though I did not understand it. Kind of off-topic, but does anyone have any book recomendations for a bookworm nine-year-old? I have read a lot, and I have read The Scarlet Pimpernel just about a month ago. I look forward to your next entry.
Mary, I’ll try to post some recommendations in a few days; meanwhile, there are some on the FAQ page on my website. Ilse, wow, is that hilarious! It just confirms my conviction that grammar check is mainly good for laughs.
Grammar check is also lots of fun if you have a character who goes by the name “Will”. Your character, Will, is not allowed to do anything, ever, in past tense.
Oh yes, Irina’s version is much better. 🙂
The grammar checker in Word is not intended as a tool for serious writers (even at my level of serious, never mind people who are actually good at it). Passive voice is badly over-abused in too much bad business writing, which has probably inspired people who have to cope with that with an excessive emotional reaction against it.
It all goes back to treating writing competently as “hard”, and more than can be expected of most students, instead of just expecting everybody to have most of this stuff down instinctively by fifth grade or something (and learning the technical terms for it somewhat later, in some areas).
Well, yeah. But what triggered the rant wasn’t the idiocy of the Word grammar checker, or even the much greater idiocy of trying to apply a business-writing-slanted set of writing rules to fiction. It was the whole “there are rules you must follow for writing fiction” thing, as exemplified by the person advocating for forbidding passive voice entirely. And while that particular allergy to passive voice may have originated with bad business writing, it has now spread well beyond it. “Don’t use passive voice” is right up there with “Don’t use adverbs” and “Always start with action” on at least 90% of the “rules for writing” that are up in various places on the Internet (and which drive me buggy).
I actually kind of enjoy watching the silly things the grammar checker suggests, when I’m in the right mood. As I said, it’s good for laughs.
I love this so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Bookmarking this.
I was told in a workshop that “The silver key was untouched” was passive voice. This by a published author. A year ago and I’m still peeved!
AMEN, Sistah!