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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Professors often ask their students to avoid the passive voice in their writing, but what exactly is the passive voice? In contrast to active verbs, which describe an action being done by a subject, ...

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 ...

II. Passives Covering up a Lack of Knowledge or Research • Example (passive voice covering up a lack of knowledge): "It has been shown that tokens are a precursor of cuneiform writing. " Again, shown ...

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 ...

In passive voice, the subject receives the action of the verb. For example, "The experiment was conducted by the researcher". Active voice is generally preferred in scientific writing because it ...