Passive voice is a blight on a lot of writing that I read. This week alone I stumbled upon a plethora of examples I could use for this blog. The only problem I encountered would be classified as choosing what passive voice problem I wanted to address.
The problems I want to address in terms of passive voice are found in Bill Bryson's book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt kid. The book itself is a relatively interesting foray into the culture of the 1950's in Iowa. Bryson covers growing up in the '50s while also covering the many political aspects associated with that particular time period. But the book suffers from the plague of passive voice.
One sentence with passive voice is this one: She was married sixteen times to nine men. The sentence exhibits Bryson's wit, but it uses passive voice. Words like "was" and "were" always indicate the passive voice and take away from the experience. To avoid passive voice he could have written: She married sixteen times to nine men. Eliminating was from the sentence also eliminates passive voice from the sentence.
I also enjoyed learning about how to correct passive voice into active voice. Reading some of the passive voice sentences in the book really opened my eyes to how active voice brings life to the sentence compared to passive voice. Of course, sometimes passive voice is necessary such as when the subject is not known.
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