Call for Volunteers! In search of a canonical post on "passive voice"

Question

We get a lot of questions on active and passive voice. The current count is up to 425. 90% of these questions are low-effort homework questions along the lines of:

I've been given these sentences and I need to convert them into passive voice. What is the passive voice form of this sentence? (and/or) Is this the correct passive voice form of this sentence?

These are not questions that are going to be useful to future ELL members, as is evidenced by the fact that it's had to be asked another 424 times after the first answer was given. What would be very useful to learners is an explanation of how you turn any sentence into passive voice, what passive voice is, why they should or shouldn't use it, a side note on why this is so often given as a homework assignment... I saw another "please convert my sentence" post today, and I was itching to close it as a duplicate, but try as I might I couldn't find a prior question with a satisfactory catch-all answer.

So! I'm calling for volunteers to write a Canonical Post (TM) on passive voice, answering the following question (feel free to tweak):

I have a sentence, and I need to change it into passive voice. What rules can I follow to reliably make this change? When is it a good idea to use passive voice, and when is it not? Why am I often asked to make this change as a homework assignment?

Why should you volunteer? Your meta post will get tagged with the shiny canonical-post tag, and will be featured on meta. Don't forget bragging rights, and the accumulation of meaningless Internet Points (that'll be rep, for those who aren't as hopelessly enmeshed in SE memes as I!). And a sense of satisfaction every time you can close a generic passive voice question with a link to your meta post.

So, any takers? Volunteering is easy, just post an answer to this question. (And if you have another topic you'd like to write about, I'd love to hear that too!) If you're not sure what's involved in the process or have any questions, post a comment and I'll clear it up for you :)

Answer 1

Since my post on perfect constructions has been cited in discussion of two very different notions of what a Canonical Post ought to be, I'd like to describe the purposes to which I saw mine being put when I wrote it.

(I don't suggest that the post in fact answers those purposes—on the contrary, its inadequacies become more and more evident the farther I recede from it. I've got to find the time to rewrite it, pretty much from the ground up. But I think the purposes themselves remain valid, and that's all I want to address here.)

I started writing the thing because I found myself answering question after question on the subject. Almost every question was distinct, almost every one raised a slightly different issue; few of the questions could honestly be closed as duplicates of others. But every answer I wrote required me to recount the same background, the same recitation of how the perfect is put together and how it works; and writing that every damn time got extremely tiresome.

My original purpose, then, was to put all the essential background in one place, where I could link to it and not have to repeat myself. If I took the time to get it right once I wouldn't have to worry with it any more: I could just answer the question at hand, and point to the relevant piece of the CP for the detailed explanation of why it was the answer—if the questioner cared.

And (for me at least) it has served this purpose. Now when I write an answer to a question involving the perfect I can simply say "It's a present tense (see [Link], §3.1)" or "That's not really a perfect (see [Link], §2.2) and proceed to answer the actual question posted, which in three cases out of four is something like "Why is this wrong?" or "How do I say this?"

It was never intended to be a Final Answer which would excuse closing every question about the perfect as a duplicate. On the contrary, it was intended to make it easier to give good answers by obviating the need to reinvent the wheel every time. As I wrote at the very top of the post:

This is a Canonical Post, intended as a reference and resource for both Questioners and Answerers.

Answer 2

I thoroughly endorse this proposal, but I think we need to remember that we've currently only got two Canonical Posts (because they're not that easy to rattle off.)

And the two we have got are very different. The original (StoneyB's magnum opus on use of the perfect) is very long - but it's dealing with a wide range of related usages, from several perspectives. But we probably shouldn't be closing many questions as duplicates of this one (there will still be issues not covered, or potential querents might have trouble understanding the finer nuances of what is covered).

The other one is a fairly straightforward dismissal of software grammar checkers. It's a lot shorter (though without wishing to be critical of Wendikidd's sterling effort, I think it's longer than it needs to be). And probably the main purpose of the post is so we can cite it in duplicate closevotes.

I think this third proposed Canonical Post requires another different format. StoneyB helpfully divided his post into half-a-dozen sections. Because there's no actual "question", he's used that slot for an introduction/index. I don't think "Use of passive voice" needs such exhaustive treatment, so I suggest it should be possible to fill the "question" slot with a concise summary of what the passive form actually is, with a suitable range of examples.

The only other thing needed is an explanation of why you might want to use passive voice. That could include distinct aspects (i.e. - separate "answer" sections) such as...

1: The "subject" is [potentially] unknown - (John was shot last night)
2: The "object" is more important in the overall context of the text (but this gets close to "Lit Crit")
3: Passive voice just sounds more formal and authoritative (effectively, "Style Advice")
4: (rant on overuse of the passive leading to dull uninspiring prose)
5: (rant on excessive TEFL preoccupation with converting Active => Passive)
etc., etc.

I feel if we can get this one right, a lot of current and future questions on the passive could be closed as duplicates.

Answer 3

Short answer

1. A canonical post on the passive is a good idea.
2. A canonical post as a tool for enabling the closure of the majority of the large number of passive voice questions we get is a terrible idea.
3. Only 425 questions on the passive so far? What is wrong with us?

We should be getting a better range of questions than this on the passive. There's obviously too much what does this word/phrase mean stuff encouraged on here at the expense of grammar and pronunciation. We need to turn this round.

A good canonical post on the passive would probably be as long and complex as StoneyB's canonical canonical post on the prefect in English. Maybe longer. The best thing about StoneyB's canonical post is that it is a long in-depth and well explained resource for learners. However, it is not concise. It isn't necessarily the easiest document for a learner to read. It could never be, and shouldn't be - if it's going to fulfill its role. Happily, the canonical post co-exists along-side well targeted responses to questions about the perfect - quite often written by Stoney himself. It hasn't turned into a page that questions get linked-to after being blindly closed.

I find it hard to express exactly how much I disagree with Wendi's assertion that 90% of the questions are low effort homework questions - if that is meant to mean that they are questions which if they'd been better developed wouldn't have ended up here on ELL. All due respect to Wendikidd - it's just that I deeply disagree. I've gone through the first page on that list, so 15 questions, and I haven't seen one that is even vaguely a duplicate of another. Indeed they cover such a breadth and range of issues, that I am actually staggered at how involved some of them are. Far from being useless for future readers, they seem to me to be the very bread and butter of what ELL should be about. They don't all show research effort and some of them could have been written better. But the content of the actual questions is exactly what a site like this should be aiming at.

In the post below, I explain a little bit about what kind of things the passive in English involves. I will then offer a dissection of the first fifteen questions on the linked-to list to show how complex and wide-ranging those questions in fact are. It's going to be a long post so I'll do it installments - especially as it's Friday, and I'm going to honour the centuries-old English tradition of finishing off the week with a drink with my colleagues in an ancient London hostelry. Here's the first installment then:

Full answer

First installment:

I agree with the sentiment of this question. However, I feel it is misguided. I think there should/could be a canonical post on passives. I don't think it should be there primarily as a resource for enabling us to close questions. There are thousands of books written on the passive. There are also hundreds of research papers written on it every month. It is a hugely complex area, covering all sorts of difficult things such as:

• long passives
• short passives
• passives with DO as Subject
• passives with IO as Subject
• prepositional passives
• passives with Subjects extracted from embedded subordinate clauses
• passives with finite clauses as Subject
• passives within subordinate clauses versus within main clauses
• finite passives
• non-finite passives
• Subjectless non-finite passives
• passives with raising verbs (for example modals)
• passives with control verbs
• the difference between syntactic functions and theta roles
• Subject, versus Object, versus Predicative Complement, versus Goal Complement, versus Locative Complement

Hmmm, maybe I should stop here. No, let's go on for a little bit. After all, we're just beginning to start to get the syntax covered. We'll move onto semantics in a little while, then some discourse pragmatics, then linguistic constraints on information packaging (which is what passives are all about). I am sure there's some other big areas that need to be covered, but I can't afford to think about those right now, I'm just starting to make some inroads into the syntax that needs to be covered. Hold on a moment, where was I? Oh yes, there's also:

• active voice clauses that can't be passivised
• passive voice clauses with no active voice alternative
• verbs which normally occur in passive voice
• verbs which resist being used in passive voice
• get-passives
• ergative get-passives
• causative get-passives
• adjectival get-passives
• have passives /causatives
• passives versus pseudo-passives
• passive versus adjective constructions
• bare passives
• so-called concealed passives (the car needs washing or even the car needs washed)
• nouns with post-modifying passive participles
• impersonal passives
• the internal complement (the by phrase), omission and movement, for example fronting and stranding of the preposition.
-

OK. I'm going to be late for getting to the pub. I'll put a second installment in soon. I'm not going to bother to try and finish the syntax section, or even try to make a dent in the others. Suffice it to say that the sections on pragmatics and information packaging could be easily twice as long as what's been glanced at here. The next installment will be an investigation of the first page or two of our passive voice questions. Just for kicks I'm also going to add bounties to some of them which haven't had the attention they deserve as I go along.

Answer 4

Yayy! Pitching in with some resources that I hope will be useful for learners.

1) https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/CCS_activevoice.html

From the link:

When to use passive voice

There are sometimes good reasons to use the passive voice. To emphasize the action rather than the actor

After long debate, the proposal was endorsed by the long-range planning committee. To keep the subject and focus consistent throughout a passage

The data processing department recently presented what proved to be a controversial proposal to expand its staff. After long debate, the proposal was endorsed by . . . . To be tactful by not naming the actor

The procedures were somehow misinterpreted. To describe a condition in which the actor is unknown or unimportant

Every year, thousands of people are diagnosed as having cancer. To create an authoritative tone

Visitors are not allowed after 9:00 p.m.

2) https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/539/01/

This is a handout explaining the difference between the two and describing when to use which. Note the sub topics given under the main topic on the left at the above link. There are 8 sub topics in all.

Awesome takeaway: The downloadable poster at this link https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/539/08/

3) http://www.towson.edu/ows/activepass.htm

Townson University's online course on English and Writing has a section on voice.

4) http://www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers/activevoice/

University of Illinois has also put up some nice notes on voice.

Excerpt: The choice between using the active or passive voice in writing is a matter of style, not correctness. However, most handbooks recommend using active voice, which they describe as more natural, direct, lively, and succinct. The passive voice is considered wordy and weak (except when used in cases above).

Answer 5

Ok. Following up on Mamta,

Start with a dictionary for the most basic of definitions.

Then, for a more definitive and detailed description (with more authority on the topic than I will have in my lifetime), go here:

Active voice

and polish that off with the follow-up:

Passive voice

(Note that I could not use 3 links. Too junior for that privilege!)