Passive/Active Verbs??
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Well, on the web there are roughly two concepts:
1. The passive voice (the grammatical concept)
2. A passive voice (a narrative voice which sounds "passive")
These concepts are often used interchangeably without realising that they're different concepts. This has the consequence that the relation between the passive voice and a passive-sounding narrative voice is rarely articulated. And this causes confusion.
So, when blacbird calls me on my example:
I actually agree. But we're talking stylistics, not grammar.
The original question actually confused me. I automatically assumed that the thread is talking about grammar (with my excuse being that this is the grammar board, but it's a weak excuse, heh).
My point? Apparently:
1. The passive voice doesn't necessarily make for a passive voice.
2. The passive voice isn't necessarily the only thing that contributes to a passive voice.
There. Confusion summarised or a confusing summary?
1. The passive voice (the grammatical concept)
2. A passive voice (a narrative voice which sounds "passive")
These concepts are often used interchangeably without realising that they're different concepts. This has the consequence that the relation between the passive voice and a passive-sounding narrative voice is rarely articulated. And this causes confusion.
So, when blacbird calls me on my example:
blacbird said:
I actually agree. But we're talking stylistics, not grammar.
The original question actually confused me. I automatically assumed that the thread is talking about grammar (with my excuse being that this is the grammar board, but it's a weak excuse, heh).
My point? Apparently:
1. The passive voice doesn't necessarily make for a passive voice.
2. The passive voice isn't necessarily the only thing that contributes to a passive voice.
There. Confusion summarised or a confusing summary?
IMO, the problem comes from confusing active with action. Once those have been muddled, there's a tendency to assume passive is the opposite and apply it inappropriately.
First, there is the distinction between active voice and passive voice. As Bufty said upthread, "There's no such thing as a passive verb." It isn't the verb that's active or passive, it's the way it's used. With active voice, the subject is acting; with passive voice, the subject is acted upon.
Active voice: Someone shot Jason three times.
Passive voice: Jason was shot three times.
On the other hand, there is the distinction between action verbs and linking verbs. This time it is the nature of the verb itself. An action verb describes an action (doh!). A linking verb attributes a state or condition to the subject.Passive voice: Jason was shot three times.
Action verb: Marcia sang a cheerful tune.
Linking verb: Marcia was happy.
However, sometimes the "same" verb has two meanings, one of which is linking while the other is action.Linking verb: Marcia was happy.
Linking verb: The rose smelled sweet.
Action verb: Cecelia smelled the rose.
Further complicating the confusion, passive voice is composed of a form of to be plus a past participle, while to be is also a common linking verb.Action verb: Cecelia smelled the rose.
Passive voice: Gavin was bitten by a dog.
Linking verb: Gavin was angry.
For the final degree of confusion, both linking verbs and passive voice can weaken writing--the strongest, most evocative prose comes from action verbs in active voice. Linking verb: Gavin was angry.
Like fuzzy copies of fuzzy copies, there's a lot of fourth- or fifth-hand writing advice floating around that has only the dimmest resemblance to any accuracy in this matter.
My pleasure.
"Be eaten" is quite ambiguous when considered in isolation. "Eat or be eaten" seems to me to shift in the verb direction, but I agree there's room for debate on that point.
Good point. The Elements of Style may support your intuition:
Four examples follow, along with Strunk's correction. Only one includes a passive voice. ("The sound of the falls could still be heard.") The others all include "was" as a linking verb, with the possible exception of "There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground." which is somewhat more complex to parse.Strunk said:
The thing is that Strunk specifically suggests "a transitive in the active voice" (which is actually a step further than "action verb", and much more problematic, but let's not go into that).
"Use the Active Voice" (the "rule's" name) is not equivalent to "Don't use the Passive Voice". These are not (necessarily) equivalent.
[Linguistic quibble:
The "leaves" example is less than clear:
"There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground." --> "Dead leaves covered the ground."
Strunk made so many changes that voice is the least of the problems. Notice that he went from "lying on the ground" to "covered the ground", exchanging an intransitive + prepositional phrase with a transitive + direct object. This helps obscure the issue, in that I'm not sure whether Strunk thinks "active voice" is a meaningful category for intransitive verbs. (And I'm willfully ignoring John Lennon's bed that has been slept in, even though "sleep" is an intransitive verb, and even though "There was a vast expanse of ground, lain upon by dead leaves," is not really a grammatical option. Or is it...)]
I'm an editor and grammar makes me sleepy. I need logic to wake up.
My concerns hew most closely to Blacbird's: The passive voice is the refuge of the sleazy. It often deprives the reader of information.
It's too easy to say, in a nonfiction piece "It was decided" or "xx was later slain in a brothel" without ever saying by who!
Sometimes the answer is that nobody knows, and this is pretty much a quote of the existing source material, endlessly repeated in every account of the incident for the following 400 years. Sometimes they know and, for some bizarre reason, just don't say. So be sure to add that Chapman bit in at the end.
I also think people who use it a lot are emotionally stepping back from their writing. My opinion only. As others have pointed out, the active is more authoritative.
So use it sparingly, if you have a reason.
My concerns hew most closely to Blacbird's: The passive voice is the refuge of the sleazy. It often deprives the reader of information.
It's too easy to say, in a nonfiction piece "It was decided" or "xx was later slain in a brothel" without ever saying by who!
Sometimes the answer is that nobody knows, and this is pretty much a quote of the existing source material, endlessly repeated in every account of the incident for the following 400 years. Sometimes they know and, for some bizarre reason, just don't say. So be sure to add that Chapman bit in at the end.
I also think people who use it a lot are emotionally stepping back from their writing. My opinion only. As others have pointed out, the active is more authoritative.
So use it sparingly, if you have a reason.
Agreed. Or even in a fiction piece. The passive construction shifts focus away from the entity doing the action. One very common use of that is to hide who that entity is -- either because it could be anyone or to avoid taking blame. Either way it's not great for fiction, because it lacks specificity; the reader can't build a vivid image up if we withhold crucial information.
But if we look at blacbird's example:
blackbird said:
In this case, the passive shifts focus to the experiencer, and if we're maintaining tight focus on the experiencer, it's sometimes a useful tool.
cmyk said:
Right, it's not a safe tool -- even in the case above, the focus is on Lennon, so the "by" makes Chapman seem sort of incidental. So it could be read as weasely even when you say who was responsible.
Just want to bold and repeat this, for it is a thing of beauty
The thing is that since the passive voice is not safe, we have to be careful about when we use it; so it's often easiest to tell beginners "Avoid it like the plague!"
But the grammatical form exists for a reason -- it's useful in the language. Sure, it's often the wrong tool for authoritative writing, but not always. It has benefits as well as flaws, and sometimes the benefits win. So the best thing we can do, as writers, is look at how it works so we understand how best to use the tool and when to hide it in a deep dark locked drawer.
...And use it sparingly, if we have a reason
So the going rate is:
- Published writers have a reason.
- Unpublished writers don't.
That's how it works out in practice. I've seen people on message boards ask "Tell me how to recognise the passive voice so I can avoid it." (They did explicitly state that in one way or another.) That's not the path to learning how to write. You won't become a good writer by avoiding the passive voice. It's the opposite direction.
Dare I challenge that assumption?
I've just read a SF story by Michael Swanwick, "Tin Marsh" (in: Gardner Dozois: The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 20). In it we have the following paragraph:
Would you really argue that the passive voice shifts the focus away from the neural implants? I'd actually argue that, because of the passive voice construction, the "neural implants" are in a more prominent position - i.e. sentence final.
The sentence is about the rules ("All three"; given), and the new information is in the neural implants (new). And what are readers going to focus on: familiar stuff or new stuff?
Without context, sentence focus is hard to tell. Even the John Lennon sentence isn't clear. You could say it in differing ways:
John Lennon was shot by Mark Chapman. (No special emphasis; information: who shot John Lennon?)
John Lennon was shot by Mark Chapman. (Emphasis on Lennon. Perhaps someone mistakenly mentioned Jim Morrison?)
John Lennon was shot by Mark Chapman. (Not Lee Harvey Oswald)
You can play the same game with active voice.
Mark Chapman shot John Lennon.
Mark Chapman shot John Lennon.
Mark Chapman shot John Lennon.
Certainly, the passive voice can function as a refuge of the sleazy. And of course you need a reason to use it. But that's a no-brainer. It's true of every single word in your text. I suspect "passive voice" gets the flack because some time, way back when grammar was young, a grammarian gave it an unhappy name. Who wants to sound "passive", after all.
The passive voice is as useful as the active voice; just not as often. Learn to use it. You won't, if you avoid it.
- Published writers have a reason.
- Unpublished writers don't.
That's how it works out in practice. I've seen people on message boards ask "Tell me how to recognise the passive voice so I can avoid it." (They did explicitly state that in one way or another.) That's not the path to learning how to write. You won't become a good writer by avoiding the passive voice. It's the opposite direction.
Schweta said:
Dare I challenge that assumption?
I've just read a SF story by Michael Swanwick, "Tin Marsh" (in: Gardner Dozois: The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 20). In it we have the following paragraph:
Swanwick said:
Would you really argue that the passive voice shifts the focus away from the neural implants? I'd actually argue that, because of the passive voice construction, the "neural implants" are in a more prominent position - i.e. sentence final.
The sentence is about the rules ("All three"; given), and the new information is in the neural implants (new). And what are readers going to focus on: familiar stuff or new stuff?
Without context, sentence focus is hard to tell. Even the John Lennon sentence isn't clear. You could say it in differing ways:
John Lennon was shot by Mark Chapman. (No special emphasis; information: who shot John Lennon?)
John Lennon was shot by Mark Chapman. (Emphasis on Lennon. Perhaps someone mistakenly mentioned Jim Morrison?)
John Lennon was shot by Mark Chapman. (Not Lee Harvey Oswald)
You can play the same game with active voice.
Mark Chapman shot John Lennon.
Mark Chapman shot John Lennon.
Mark Chapman shot John Lennon.
Certainly, the passive voice can function as a refuge of the sleazy. And of course you need a reason to use it. But that's a no-brainer. It's true of every single word in your text. I suspect "passive voice" gets the flack because some time, way back when grammar was young, a grammarian gave it an unhappy name. Who wants to sound "passive", after all.
The passive voice is as useful as the active voice; just not as often. Learn to use it. You won't, if you avoid it.
Does that happen to be the whole paragraph, so that "neural implant" ends the paragraph, not just the sentence? If so, I agree with you--the benefit from getting it into the power position outweighs the cost of passive voice.
That's how I see it: Recognize there is a cost to using passive voice, but there are also situations in which the gain is greater than the cost. As long as you have a net profit, it's the right choice.
Sometimes we get so focussed on teaching beginners the first part--what passive voice is and why there's a cost to using it--that we neglect to mention the second part--how to recognize appropriate uses.
There's something Uncle Jim said a while ago that made a huge impression on me.
That's not about passive voice per se, but the principle applies quite handily: Whenever you're tempted to use passive voice (or any other "forbidden" technique), hold a gun to its head and make it justify its existence.
Yes, it's the whole paragraph. I had to go back to check, though.
I focussed on the position, because Schweta's usage of "focus" confused me a bit. All the passive voice does is shift the agent to object position, and the patient (grammatical term) to subject position. That's not the same as "focus". Of course, it depends what you mean with focus, but I'd argue that focus of a sentence usually lies in the predicate (where we usually, though not always, find the new information). But that's me talking about "perceptive focus".
Anyway, I think the passive voice follows from having "All three" as the subject already, and having "All three" as the subject is perfectly natural in the flow of the paragraph. The power position is a bonus; the passive voice is appropriate here. There would be a cost to changing it to the passive voice.
From my reading tastes I have to say that I find "agency" overrated in the discussion of the passive voice. It's incidental.
I almost agree, but not quite. See, if you use active voice where I'd expect a passive, the cost would go to the active voice. (I think that's true in the above sentence.)
Normally, writing isn't an either/or issue. You can always write around the issue that's giving you trouble. That's why you can never use a single passive voice construction and still be a good writer. You just bend your text so the "need" never arrives. But I don't buy into the default assumption that passive voice comes with a cost.
This is how the passive voice discussions look to me:
Don't use the letter "X". It's "Thanks" not "Thanx". The letter "x" isn't always bad. You may want to spell "Xylophone" for example.
When all you're really saying is: "I don't like it when people spell 'Thanks' 'Thanx'."
It's more complex, I admit, but that's basically how I see it.
That's not all that bad, really. If you're dealing with someone who knows what they're talking about you can usually work out the issues. But the thing is that these kind of "rules" get passed on from one confused writer to another. And since a blanket ban on the passive voice doesn't make sense to many people the concept expands...
Thanks for the quote. To my mind, Mr MacDonald forgot: "aid sentence rhythm", but other than that it's a great quote.
Well the real issue with the passive voice in that respect is that usually (not always, but usually) you're holding the gun to two words (helping verb + participle). [And that's probably why they throw continuous tenses into the bag, when they're talking about "a passive voice", the stylistic concept. And viewed like that it does make sense. It's a bit inconsistent to single out the passive voice above all other two-word constructions. (Remember I don't consider the agent-subject relation very important.)]
Lovely example, Dawnstorm. I'm enjoying this discussion
I'm with the giraffe on this; I think that yes, paragraph-final position is important, as is sentence-final if the sentence has the right rhythm for it. I think in this case it's outweighing the lack of focus that comes with an optional prepositional phrase.
The content is also Not Incidental here. "enforced by neural implants" is partly powerful because it's creepy and nasty and attention-grabbing. "Recorded by machines" would not have the same impact even in paragraph-final position.
That's all it does formally; I'm arguing that the focus-shift is a semantic aspect of the construction. I'm basing this off this book, mostly, but there's also other work supporting it, including corpus work (searching big databases of language use) and I think some psycholinguistic work.
I'm talking about attentional focus.
I have to run right now, but I wonder if this discussion might be productively split off into another thread? It's not directly useful to the OP, but it's definitely a discussion worth having
I'm with the giraffe on this; I think that yes, paragraph-final position is important, as is sentence-final if the sentence has the right rhythm for it. I think in this case it's outweighing the lack of focus that comes with an optional prepositional phrase.
The content is also Not Incidental here. "enforced by neural implants" is partly powerful because it's creepy and nasty and attention-grabbing. "Recorded by machines" would not have the same impact even in paragraph-final position.
That's all it does formally; I'm arguing that the focus-shift is a semantic aspect of the construction. I'm basing this off this book, mostly, but there's also other work supporting it, including corpus work (searching big databases of language use) and I think some psycholinguistic work.
I'm talking about attentional focus.
I have to run right now, but I wonder if this discussion might be productively split off into another thread? It's not directly useful to the OP, but it's definitely a discussion worth having
I view it as a single construction rather than two words. The word boundaries seem less important to me than the syntactical boundaries. Although, perhaps that's why your next comment is something that never occurred to me.
The only times I've seen continuous tenses called passive was in conjunction with the absurd claim that every use of "to be" is passive. I always assumed that was due to a complete lack of understanding of the grammatical concepts involved.
There are all kinds of sub-divisions. The "to be" = passive is the extreme expression. But even there what they're arguing is "use action verbs", and this tends to be enveloped in "use sensual-evocative words". The same people will often speak out against helping verbs, articles, prepositions, abstract terms (usually referred to as part of "show, don't tell") etc.
When I first heard that collapsing of ideas into term "passive voice" I had your thoughts.. My a-ha moment came when I found a writer's site who had a section on grammar, and in the tag line they said something like "are you writing in a passive voice?" Now the indefinite article makes no sense whatsoever. You can't "write" in the passive voice, either (you can put some verbs into the passive voce; you can use it). Once you translate the "grammatical rule" into a "stylistic rule", it makes more sense, say, in terms of sentence economy.
To be sure, the grammatical understanding is rather fuzzy. But that's not so much ignorance. It's more a layer of false terminology: they're talking style, but they think they're talking grammar. (This is a gross oversimplification; there are various levels of grammaticalness involved.)
To be honest, when I'm writing I think in terms of syllables and stress, not words, but that's another question altogether. Heh. [And the issue at hand is interesting; I'm sure there are linguists out there who argue that English doesn't have a passive voice, since "passive voice" is expressed in a non-unique syntactic construction rather than a morphological modification of the verb, but... um... yes... sorry.]
Schweta said:
I agree, but for me this would have no impact on voice-choice (ooh, say that a couple of times). As I said, I don't think the sentence final position is the impetus to use the passive voice; I feel the passive voice would be natural, here, and the active voice would be marked. So I'd still use the passive voice with "recorded by machines", simply because making the three rules the subject is a natural progression of expressing ideas. Introducing a new subject would be a disjunction.
So what you're saying is: If you change a sentence from active to passive the change causes the reader/listener to re-focus his/her attention on the experiencer (which implies that in an active voice sentence the focus is on the agent)? Do I understand this correctly?
My intuition would be exactly the other way round: In the active voice the agent is the focal point form which you direct your attention to the focus, the experiencer. The passive voice reverses this. (If you're in the train, you focus on the tracks. If you're on the tracks you focus on the train (and if you have a walky-talky you may focus on the driver, too). If the verb's intransitive you focus on nothing, enjoying the ride.)
[Terminology alert: Or in other words, I'm coming from the "given/new", "theme/rheme" corner, here, and I'm equating "focus" with "new" and "rheme". In narrative theory, I'd argue focaliser vs. focus. etc. Hope this helps.]
Hope you're back soon. New thread might be a good idea. Or perhaps I can learn to talk properly?I have to run right now, but I wonder if this discussion might be productively split off into another thread? It's not directly useful to the OP, but it's definitely a discussion worth having
Great thread here. I wish there were more just like it. Now I understand why I've been at this so long and still so often confused.
Hope you're back soon. New thread might be a good idea. Or perhaps I can learn to talk properly?
I really wanted to be back and contribute more but got extremely sick and my head's all fuzzy so I'm not gonna try now
But if you guys start a new thread, let me know? Then I can turn up at the party at some point...
I really wanted to be back and contribute more but got extremely sick and my head's all fuzzy so I'm not gonna try now
But if you guys start a new thread, let me know? Then I can turn up at the party at some point...
Get well, soon.
I may make a new thread in the theory board one day, but I'm rather busy now, myself.
Kerr said:
Phew. I was worrying I might be confusing people above all.
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