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Purge
the Passive Voice Anyone
who knows me as a writer knows how vigilantly I try to purge the passive voice
from manuscripts I write and edit. After all, if we're going to put in that much
time and effort into writing, we want it to maintain a good pace throughout and
keep the action moving. Even if we fully saturate our psyche with this
philosophy, we often read through the passive verbs as we revise and polish our
work. Recently I found a better way using the Find and Replace function in
Microsoft Word. Let me share these simple directions with you. While these are
specifically for Microsoft Word, other word processing programs, such as Word
Perfect, operate in much the same way *
Click on Edit. *
Click on Replace. *
Click on More. *
Click on All. *
In the same menu, click on Match case and Find whole words only. *
In the Find what: field, type in the word am. *
In the Replace with: field, type in the word am. *
Click on Format. *
Click on Highlight. *
Click on Replace All. This
little operation will highlight in yellow the word 'am' every time it appears in
your manuscript, thus making it stand out and virtually impossible for you to
read through. Repeat the operation for the following words: is, was, were, be,
become, are, and been. Also add "would" to that list. Would often
indicates the conditional tense, a very weak tense to write in. Then
go back to your manuscript and look at each highlighted word. Seriously rethink
that sentence and ask yourself how you can rewrite it to make it more vibrant,
more colorful, and more meaningful. Remember, you don't have to change all of
them because often the passive approach works better but I think you'll find you
have many opportunities to strengthen your writing by changing passive voice to
active voice. Example:
The wonderful story was written by you. Revision:
You wrote the story that touched my heart. Now
that you have this wonderful tool in your toolbox, I hope you'll use it to write
words that will indeed touch hearts. Joan
R. Neubauer writes, speaks, and runs a publishing firm, WordWright.biz, Inc. If
you would like more tips, subscribe to her free on-line newsletter "The
Wright Stuff" at WWW.wordwright.biz.
Joan's books include: The
Complete Idiot's Guide to Journaling ISBN 0-02-863980-4 Dear
Diary, The Art and Craft of Writing a Creative Journal ISBN 0-916489-61-2 From
Memories to Manuscript, The Five-Step Method of Writing Your Life Story Down
But Not Out ISBN 0-9700615-0-1 Heart
of my Heart ISBN 0-9700615-7-9 S.C.A.T.
ISBN 0-9713832-4-3 |
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