Definition:
A verb form or voice in which the grammatical subject receives the verb's action. Contrast with active voice.
Examples and Observations:
- "Indiscriminate slandering of the passive voice ought to be stopped. The passive should be recognized as a quite decent and respectable structure of English grammar, neither better nor worse than other structures. When it is properly chosen, wordiness and obscurity are no more increased than when the active voice is properly chosen. Its effective and appropriate use can be taught."
(Jane R. Walpole, "Why Must the Passive Be Damned?" College Composition and Communication, 1979) - "The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions but by his habitual acts."
(Pascal) - "I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true."
(Dorothy Parker) - "We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice--that is, until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.'"
(Sidney J. Harris) - "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
(Winston Churchill) - "America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else . . .. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy."
(Samuel Eliot Morison) - "The young gentleman was later seen by me in front of the gare Saint-Lazare."
(Raymond Queneau, "Passive," Exercises in Style, 1947) - "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
(Douglas Adams) - "Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale."
(Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
