Confusion over avoiding the passive (original) (raw)

Many grammarians and commentators on usage and writing have delivered themselves of truly fantastic statements about the passive construction. Almost without exception, they recommend that you should try to avoid it. Some denigrate and deplore it in more extreme terms, treating it asunnatural, evasive, or unmanly, or evenevil. To a truly extraordinary extent, they tend to be utterly unable to recognize instances of it; on this topic, see my paper 'Fear and loathing of the English passive (Language and Communication 37, 60-74 [2014];browsable version of the text here).

The passive is of course perfectly respectable, and there is no reason to try to avoid it. To say that it shouldn't be over-used, or it shouldn't be used where it is inappropriate, doesn't distinguish it from any other construction or expression. Of course you shouldn't overdo it — the whole point of the over+VERB construction is to express the idea that something can be done too much, and that's bad.

Note also that it would be quite peculiar for there to be a way of constructing clauses, well known to everyone, that was generally not appropriate for use. If everyone who understood how to use the language well could see that the passive was not fit to be used, its survival down the centuries would be inexplicable.

In truth, the passive is very often exactly the right way to frame a clause in a particular context. All competent authors use passives frequently. The people who recommend against it use it themselves, even while talking about how you should not use it. For example, in the act of explaining that you should "Use the active voice" because it is "more direct and vigorous than the passive", William Strunk and E. B. White assert that "Many a tame sentence . . . can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice" (see section 14 of their book The Elements of Style). Their sentence defies their warning; it contains an instance of the passive voice itself (can be made lively and emphatic). They then proceed to give four examples together with illustrations of how to improve them "by substituting a transitive in the active voice", but not a single one of them actually illustrates a passive clause contrasted with an active transitive.

For an excellent example of the sort of misdirected grammar advice given in writing courses as a result of confusion about what the passive voice is, take a look at this page (kindly provided by Craig Russell) from a student paper as corrected in red by a teaching assistant at a top private university on the East Coast of the USA:

In ten places an allegation of passive voice is marked with an angry "P.V." (and "Passive voice!" is added in the margin to clarify); and in an astonishing 70% of them, the teaching assistant's analysis was incorrect.

1.	was obviously very interested:	copular verb (was) with adjective phrase complement	—TA was wrong
2.	was quite brilliantly using:	progressive be (was) with transitive gerund-participle	—TA was wrong
3.	was also reluctant:	copular verb (was) with adjective phrase complement	—TA was wrong
4.	was relatively easy:	copular verb (was) with adjective phrase complement	—TA was wrong
5.	were opposing:	progressive be (were) with transitive gerund-participle	—TA was wrong
6.	was corrupt:	copular verb (was) with adjective phrase complement	—TA was wrong
7.	were more and more motivated:	copular verb (were) with passive clause complement
8.	were motivated:	copular verb (were) with passive clause complement
9.	were more likely to attract:	copular verb (were) with adjective phrase complement	—TA was wrong
10.	was mentioned:	copular verb (was) with passive clause complement

And amusingly, the phrase _Innocent saw his people taken from him_is marked "awkward" (though it isn't), but is not identified as a passive — yet it is a passive. The TA failed to spot it because the passive clause in question (taken from him by the Waldensian heresy and the Albigensian, or Cathar, heresy) is not the complement of the copula. It is very common, in fact, to find writing instructors thinking that wherever they see the copula (am, are, be, been,being, is, was, or were) they are seeing a passive, and that there are no other indicators of the passive.

List of Language Log posts on the passive

Passives have provided rich material for posts onLanguage Log by a number of writers. Some are on political topics, some literary, some syntactic. Several of them point out instances of the surprisingly common error of talking about the passive as a "tense" (it is nothing of the sort, under standard and traditional definitions of tense). Jan Freeman has a terse précis of important points drawn from Language Log in her excellent article "Active Resistance" (Boston Sunday Globe, March 22, 2009). Below is a list of posts from Language Log that discuss interesting (and often amusing) points about the passive construction, in chronological order, oldest first (the ones further down the list often have links back to earlier ones).

Passive voice and bias in Reuter headlines about Israelis and Palestinians(Geoff Pullum; December 17, 2003)

The passivator(Mark Liberman; April 6, 2004)

Two out of three on passives(Geoff Pullum; May 8, 2004)

Hey folks, 'passive voice' != 'vague about agency'(Mark Liberman; May 31, 2004)

Tossing technical terms around(Mark Liberman; August 5, 2005)

Voice confused with tense at the Economist(Geoff Pullum; March 13, 2006)

Diagnosing soup label syntax(Mark Liberman; June 29, 2006)

Passive aggression(Geoff Pullum; July 18, 2006)

How long have we been avoiding the passive, and why?(Arnold Zwicky; July 22, 2006)

The ancient roots of passive avoidance(Mark Liberman, July 23, 2006)

When men were men, and verbs were passive(Mark Liberman, August 4, 2006)

The direct and vigorous hyptic voice(Mark Liberman, August 5, 2006)