I finally learned how to teach my guys to ID the passive voice. If you can insert “by zombies” after the verb, you have passive voice.
— Rebecca Johnson (@johnsonr) October 18, 2012
Do you abuse the passive voice in your own writing? As you can see by the tweet embedded above, it is very easy to check.
A Reddit discussion has resurrected USMC professor of culture and ethics Rebecca Johnson‘s writing advice from last year, giving all writers a killer tip for avoiding the passive voice. If you want more guidance, the UNC Writing Center has a free handout about uses and abuses of the passive voice. Check it out:
A passive construction occurs when you make the object of an action into the subject of a sentence. That is, whoever or whatever is performing the action is not the grammatical subject of the sentence.
(Mobile image via dbbent)