Grammar Girl: Active vs. Passive voice

This semester, if I wanted to get my students looking itchy and just a little bit scared, all I had to do was mention passive voice. Most of them just didn't get it - even after I made up a little passive/active man dance (you try keeping undergrads's attention for 90 minutes... it tends to make you kind of crazy).

I got frustrated by how many of them STILL didn't get it come exam time--what about the dance?? But I, too, remember struggling with passive voice when I was their age. It's not always an easy one to spot, and an even wilier one to try and really understand. So here, my attempt to explain the difference between active and passive voice (and why you should care).

So what do I mean by 'voice', anyway? We're talking about a grammatical category that indicates the relationship between the subject (agent) of your sentence and your verb (action). If you've got an agent carrying out an action in your sentence, then you're using active voice. Verbs are our language's 'doing' words: when an agent in performing what you're describing in your verb, then you're using active voice. If the action of the sentence is happening TO your subject, then you've got passive voice.

Now, for my running man example (minus the dance): when I think of active voice, I think of a man out for a jog at 5AM. He's being ACTIVE - going out and actively carrying out an activity. In order for a sentence to use active voice, it has to do the same thing. Your agent (subject) has to be the one carrying out your verb. For example:

I (agent/subject) once created (action/verb) a fake wedding invitation marrying my brother to one of my friends. (true story - don't ask)

This is what the passive version of this sentence would look like with the subject of the sentence being acted upon.

A fake wedding invitation marrying my brother and one of my friends was created by me.

So we've got a difference in emphasis here. The active voice emphasizes the subject, and the passive voice emphasizes the object or receiver of the action. More examples:

Active: Hope bit her Dad in the leg.

Passive: Hope's Dad was bitten in the leg by Hope.

Active: Last night I dreamed about that hunky anesthesiologist from the show Offspring.

Passive: Last night the hunky doctor from the show Offpring was dreamed about by me.

So here's where my students' eyes start going fuzzy. Because, yes, these sentences are saying the same thing. But they are saying it in different ways, and that's why we care. The passive voice is more difficult fora reader to understand. It's wordier, more roundabout, and often puts space between the actor and action. Sometimes it puts the subject at the end of the sentence so that you don't know who is actually biting Dad's leg until just before the full stop, which can be really confusing. Sometimes the actor doesn't appear in the sentence at all. Passive voice makes for more garbled sentences and, 99% of the time, weaker prose. I mean look at the sentences above: which ones do you prefer? Which ones do you think are easier to read?

It's not that passive voice is always bad. Sometimes you don't want the emphasis to be put on the agent like, say, in a press release from a company that has spilled massive amounts of oil into the sea. They'll say something like "this oversight is regretted", instead of "we regret this oversight." They don't WANT their grammar to sharpen the obvious: that they've done something that people aren't going to be fans of. So it makes sense that they'd want to make themselves out as the object of the action rather than its agent: that's why you see passive voice in so many corporate and government documents. Sometimes the object is more important than the agent. This is the point in the lecture when I'd do my passive man dance, a creepy side-shuffle with jazz hands meant to symbolize someone who is side-stepping the action/blame.

When it comes to writing clearly, active voice is almost always the way you want to go. I've seen so many writers use passive voice without meaning to and then look distraught when they can't figure out how to make their sentence stronger. So when you're reading your work, ask yourself: is the subject of your sentence the one who is doing/has done/will do the action? If not, you're probably using passive voice. And you should probably revise for clarity.

An example from my work:

Passive: A step forward was taken, camera clutched between my hands.

Active: I took a step forward, camera clutched between my hands.

... better, right?

Grammar Girl: Writing Concisely (Part 2)

I really wanted to figure out how to SHOW my students the power of writing concisely. So I told them about my Fiction class in college, the one during which I took my first real stabs at fiction writing. I wrote a story about my summer camp, a place that was special to me, and thought I'd written something fairly pretty. After reading it, my professor decided it would make a perfect exemplar for our upcoming class on writing concisely/word choice. He handed out a copy to every student and asked them to do just one thing: get rid of the words the story doesn't need. I thought this would mean maybe five or six words. But really it meant more like 50%.

I hated to show this example to my students, because the writing is horrifyingly bad. I really can't believe I thought so highly of this paragraph. I can't believe no one mocked me--I mean, I'm thankful no one did, but wow. But sharing it with students also (I hope) showed them the power and importance of critique for anyone who's serious about writing.

So this is the paragraph I started out with:

Swift walked through the mist of a late August summer morning. The lush green leaves of oaks, cedars, and poplars shifted gently in an infinitesimal breeze. Thick tufts of foliage hanging from forked branches twittered with the cacophony of cackling birds. Through small gaps in the forest canopy, lines of soft golden light filtered through, and slanted slivers of pale green and yellow cut through the air. Electric green moss crept around the roots and edges of the forest floor. It had rained the night before and the forest’s thick carpet of dead leaves was drying. Their crinkled white and brown spots gave off the acrid smell of wet mold and ancient stories. Swift’s feet pattered softly up the dusty path that wound through the forest like a creek would, babbling over small rocks and fallen branches. She walked without seeing; she could have closed her eyes and walked the path from memory. The putter of her feet was barely perceptible as she traversed the path that would lead her to the top of the valley. (176 words)

This is what the class did to it:

Swift walked through the mist of a late August summer morning. The lush green leaves of oaks, cedars, and poplars shifted gently in an infinitesimal breeze. Thick tufts of foliage hanging from forked branches twittered with the cacophony of cackling birds. Through small gaps in the forest canopy, lines of soft golden light filtered through, and slanted slivers of pale green and yellow cut through the air. Electric green moss crept around the roots and edges of the forest floor. It had rained the night before and the forest’s thick carpet of dead leaves was drying. Their crinkled white and brown spots gave off the acrid smell of wet mold and ancient stories. Swift’s feet pattered softly up the dusty path that wound through the forest like a creek would, babbling over small rocks and fallen branches. She walked without seeing; she could have closed her eyes and walked the path from memory. The putter of her feet was barely perceptible as she traversed the path that would lead her to the top of the valley. (176)

And this is what I ended up with:

Swift walked through the woods on a summer morning. Lines of soft light fell through the canopy, lighting up the path that stretched out in front her. It had rained the night before and the leaf carpet was drying. It gave off the acrid smell of wet mold and ancient stories. Swift’s feet pattered up the dusty path that wound up to the top of the valley. She walked without seeing; she could have closed her eyes and walked the path from memory. (80 words)

I was crushed by this exercise, of course. I thought the class was trying to kill all of my lovely description, all of my well-crafted alliteration. But looking back I know that was the most life-changing critique I ever recieved. Because my first paragraph was completely awful, and if they hadn't showed me why, I might never have understood what it means to write well. Writing well doesn't always mean pretty passages and lots of words: it means keeping the words that matter, and getting rid of those that are getting in the way of what you're really trying to say.

Grammar Girl: The Battle of its vs. it's vs. its'

(Update 10/26/11: for more grammar tips like this one, visit my editorial website at www.katejarmstrong.com)

To use it's or its or its': that is the question. And it's a question that commonly confuses many a would-be writer. This is the mistake I see most commonly and glaringly used in government documents, slide shows, and billboards, and one that is so small-seeming that it is frequently skipped over. But it's also a very easy rule to get on top of. Read on and I promise you'll never get it wrong again.

It's: This form is used exclusively as a contraction of 'it is' or 'it has'. When making contractions, the apostrophe takes the place of any missing letters (in this case, the 'i' in is and the 'ha' in has). That's it, folks: only use it's when you really mean it is or it has. Easy trick: read the sentence back to yourself, replacing it's with it is or it has. If the sentence no longer makes sense, you're using the wrong form.

Its: Usually, possessive pronouns are made using apostrophes, as in 'Sarah's boy toy' or 'the man's love of necrophilia'. But not with its. When you are making its possessive, you leave out the apostrophe: 'its weakness' or 'its pumpkin face'. Remember, the apostrophe-using it's is ONLY used when you mean it is or it has.

Its': Its' does not exist. We see it all the time, and we've probably all used it at some point, but there is no such thing as its'. So delete it from your memory bank.

Introducing: Grammar Girl

So I've been grading papers again. This involves sitting at my desk, writing sloppily, and trying to find the fewest number of words with which to dispense grammar advice. While making my notes, I realized that I'd spelled 'necessary' wrong on one of my student's papers. Which means I probably spelled it wrong on several papers. Yikes!

After several years spent teaching/practicing/reading about/working in the field of writing and editing, I like to consider myself fairly hip to grammar conventions. Sure, I get confused about the subtle, sometimes maddening differences between Australian and American spelling, but otherwise I like to think of myself as a kind of grammar good Samaritan, arming young minds with good writing guidelines that will hold them in good stead for the rest of their lives. They expect me to be an expert on such things. But that's the thing. I'm not an expert. And in my opinion, 99.9% of the people who profess to be 'grammar experts' are lying.

Grammar conventions aren't static things. They are constantly changing depending on the year, the country you're in, the style guide you're using, and the audience you're writing for. Sometimes, like in the case of 'e-mail' vs 'email', spelling and grammar depends on what mood you're in and what feels 'right' to you. The slippery nature of our shifting language is what scares people into thinking they'll never be any good at writing.

I spent several hours the other day trying to figure out what the 'proper' rule on using quotation marks is in Australia (Do we use " or ' for direct quotation? Do we put commas inside or outside the quote mark?). My students' lecture and textbooks couldn't seem to come to any unanimous conclusion, so I tried looking online. Same deal. In desperation, I leafed through all of the books in my bookshelf purchased in Australia. There was no way to tell. And yet a student of mine was told my an editor that "In Australia, we don't USE double quotation marks for dialogue". And all I can think is: as long as it's not distracting to the reader... who cares?

Some people get way too caught up on what's 'correct' when the truth is that we're mostly talking guidelines here, not strict rules. The whole point of teaching grammar and syntax is to help people tell the stories they want to tell, not to try and keep them out of some made-up writing elite.

So I've decided that every time I discover something new and useful (and maybe even interesting) about grammar, I'm going to blog about it. So for those of you who are still awake and reading, here you go:

until vs. till/'til/til: is there a 'right' way to bastardize the word 'until'?

Rule: Apparently, till was a word long before until started being used. It isn't actually a shortening of until, but another word entirely. If you're trying to create a contraction of the word until, the logical choice is to use 'til (as apostrophes take the place of missing letters). That said, till is still commonly used in similar situations and, more rarely, so is til.

Verdict: Any one will do, but if you're creating a contraction, 'til is the most 'proper'.