Finally, make every effort to avoid the Academic Passive, a particularly nefarious style of writing illustrated in the following example: "In this paper it has been shown that..." Very often a writer ...

We refer to a sentence as being in the "active voice" when the subject is performing the action of the sentence (the verb). A sentence is in the "passive voice" when the subject is being acted upon by ...

Writing in the active voice makes the meaning clear while keeping sentences from becoming complicated and wordy. Sentences using passive voice are not necessarily wrong, just less effective than ...

Use your current topic — that is, what you are writing about — as the grammatical subject of your sentence (see Verbs: Choosing between active and passive voice). When writing a complex ...

Teaching students to write in the active voice will significantly strengthen their essays because sentences written in the active voice often have much more impact than those written in the passive ...

nuanced tone of passive voice? We’ve gathered two expert wordsmiths from the world of academia to share the pros and cons of each. Join us as Kristin Sainani and Celia Elliott present their cases on ...

Both describe the same facts. However, in each pair one sentence uses the active voice and one uses the passive voice. Which sentence would you use? That would depend on what tone you wanted to ...

Both describe the same facts. However, in each pair one sentence uses the active voice and one uses the passive voice. Which sentence would you use? That would depend on what tone you wanted to ...