Writing Passive Voice? - I Was And Didn't Even Know It!
Published on July 31, 2017
Published on Wealthy Affiliate — a platform for building real online businesses with modern training and AI.
Are You Writing Passive Voice?
When creating your posts/pages do you give much thought to grammar?
What Is Passive Voice
In Layman's terms, Passive Voice is when the subject of the sentence is acted upon.
Example of a Passive Voice Sentence:
The brakes were slammed on by her as the car sped downhill.
The action (slamming brakes) is acting upon the subject (her).
Example Of The Active Voice Sentence:
She (subject) slammed on the brakes (action) as the car sped downhill.
Spotting Passive Voice
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You want to look for a form of "to be". These could be words such as:
- Is, Are, Am, Was, Were
- Have Been, Has Been, Had Been
- Will Be, Will Have Been, Being
followed by a past participle (typically expresses completed action), typically, but not always, ends in "ed".
More Examples: Passive Voice Vs Active Voice
This Product can be bought in our workshop
Customers can buy this product in our workshop
The bags are checked by a security guard
A security guard checks the bags
The employees are informed about....
The manager informs the employees about.....
More Information On Passive Voice
There is defiantly more information about recognizing, using/or not using, and how to spot the usage of passive voice online but, my intent was just to bring awareness to this part of the grammatical construction.
The use of passive voice is just one of the analysis components for readability in Yoast SEO
In Conclusion
As brief as this post is, I hope that this has been helpful to you. I do believe this information is very beneficial while composing content on our websites or really, in any writing that we do.
Are you writing passive voice on you blogs? Now you know what they are, how to spot them, and how to correct them using active voice.
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Make The Effort - Great Things Will Happen!
Suzette
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