Active
Voices from History
By Fidget
To make your writing more emphatic,
Consider some others than grammatic.
Subject before,
To you I implore,
Consider active voice, not static.
((Passive voice: a curse on the essayists! It makes writing,
even story writing, weak and confusing. Sometimes it can be used to your
advantage, but I suggest you strive for active voice. Examples of passive voice
and how it can be turned to active:
(Direct objects are bold, subjects are italicized.)
The English at
...turns into...
Joan of
Arc defeated the English at
Voila. See how the subject was transferred to the beginning
of the sentence? And once more.
Pope
Gregory XI was convinced by Catherine
de Siena to move back to
...turns into...
Catherine
de Siena convinced Pope
Gregory XI to move back to
Why yes, I do have a history test soon, how kind of you to
notice. How about one last example?
The European History
test was eaten by the owl and
crunched into little smithereens.
...turns into...
The owl ate the European History test and crunched it
into little smithereens.
Questions? Comments?
E-mail me at missthis@hotmail.com, or
notify me on the Golden Pen Forum.))