Passive/Active Voice
Definitions:
Active Voice: The agent/doer is the subject of the sentence, and performs the action expressed by the verb. Emphasis is on
the doer of the action.
ex. Shakespeare wrote the play.
Passive Voice: The agent/doer is not the subject, and receives the action expressed by the verb. It is possible in this
construction to eliminate the agent. Emphasis is on the thing or person receiving the action, and on the action itself.
ex. The play was written by Shakespeare.
ex. The play was written.
Passive Constructions (Verb “to be” + Past Participial):
The play is written.
The play is being written.
The play was written.
The play was being written.
The play will be written.
The play will have been written.
The play had been written.
The play has been written.
Passive or Active: How to choose?:
In high school you may have had teachers telling you not to use passive voice in your writing. But passive voice can be a
useful tool in many circumstances. When deciding between using passive or active voice in a sentence, it’s important to
consider the affect you want the sentence to have on your reader and what aspect of the sentence or action you want to
emphasize.
Use active to:
Cut down on wordiness.
Call attention to the agent/doer.
Say something in a straightforward manner.
Use passive voice to:
Call attention to the receiver of the action and to the action itself:
ex. Employees in YES/NO Company were underpaid and disgruntled
ex. Alice was abused.
Draw attention away from the agent/doer/performer of the action.
Scientific/Institutional/Technical Writing Purposes
ex. Rent is due on the first of the month.
ex. Dogs are not allowed to poop on the sidewalk.
ex. Hydrogen is mixed with Oxygen to create water.
Avoiding or Reducing Culpability
ex. The car was wrecked by Robert. (Native Americans’ culture was destroyed by European settlers.)
ex. Miscalculations were make in the accounting records.
ex. Erroneous information about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was disseminated.
Highlight Receiver When Agent is Unknown:
ex. The toilet seat was left up.
Notification of a Criminal Incident - Seattle Campus
November 18, 2013
Burglaries
On Monday morning, November 18, 2013, Seattle Police responded to a reported burglary that had just occurred at a
fraternity house at 4600 22nd Ave N.E. UW Police monitored the broadcast of the crime and were in the area within
minutes to assist SPD in searching for the two suspects. At approximately 6:40 a.m., a male house member confronted a
lone male suspect inside the residence as he descended the stairs from the second floor. The suspect was startled when
confronted and immediately fled from the house with the house member giving chase. Once outside, the suspect climbed
onto a red mountain bike and fled northbound on 22nd Ave N.E. The house member then saw a female emerge from an
alcove on the side of the home. She was startled by the house member and dropped a case of Red Bull she was
carrying. She got onto a separate bicycle and fled in the same direction as the male suspect. The house member then
returned to the house and called 911 to report the intruders. UWPD and SPD searched the area and did not locate the
suspects. The Seattle Police Department is investigating this incident under report # 13-417337.
The male Caucasian suspect is described as being in his mid-twenties, 6'0, 170 lbs. with messy short black hair and
scruffy facial hair. He was wearing a black baseball cap with "hip-hop like" symbols on it, a black hooded sweatshirt,
dark pants, and carrying a black "Burton" backpack.
The female Caucasian suspect was described as being in her mid-twenties,5'6", 103 lbs with dirty blond hair with color
streaks in it. She was wearing dark clothing.
On Sunday, November 17, 2013, a female resident at 4521 17th Ave N.E. reported that between the hours of 1:00 a.m. and
9:00 a.m. the same day, an unknown suspect stole an Apple Macbook Air computer from a table outside her room. She
reported that the house seemed secure, and that it appeared nothing else was taken. When other house members
returned from the weekend they discovered that a total of six laptop computers were stolen from various rooms from
within the house. No suspect was seen. This incident is being investigated by the Seattle Police under report # 13-416544.
Since October 31, 2013, multiple burglaries have occurred at various residences in the residential area north of the UW
campus. In some instances, force was used to enter, and in others the suspect(s) entered via an un-secured window or
door. In most cases, the suspects have slipped into the houses between midnight and 8 a.m. while residents were inside,
and brazenly took laptops from common areas and study rooms. So far, the suspect or suspects have stolen multiple
laptops from multiple sorority and fraternity houses north of the UW campus.
These cases are all being investigated by the Seattle Police Department.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can
tackle race only as spectacle—as we did in the O.J. trial—or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of
Katrina—or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day, and
talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American
people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a
Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to
John McCain in the general election regardless of politics. We can do that, but if we do, I can tell you that in the next
election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will
change.
—Barack Obama, from “A More Perfect Union”
I dozed, and dreamt again: if possible, still more disagreeably than before. This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak
closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir-bough repeat its teasing
sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and, I
thought, I rose and endeavoured to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple: a circumstance observed
by me when awake, but forgotten.
“I must stop it, nevertheless!” I muttered, knocking my knuckles though the glass, and stretching my arm out to
seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense
horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice
sobbed, “Let me in—let me in!”
“Who are you?” I asked, struggling, meanwhile to disengage myself.
“Catherine Linton,” it replied, shiveringly (why did I think Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for
Linton). “I’m come home: I lost my way on the moor!”
—Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights