chomiji: Tenpou from Saiyuki Gaiden. with the caption Not necessarily by the book (Tenpou - Not by the book)
chomiji ([personal profile] chomiji) wrote in [community profile] fandom_grammar2013-09-28 08:20 pm
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Friday Funnies: The Passive Voice

An image of a twitter post. The poster, Rebecca Johnson, says that - I finally leaned how to teach my guys to ID the passive voice. If you can insert 'by zombies' after the verb, you have passive voice.
— From Grammarly, citing Rebecca Johnson et seq. on Twitter

If the details of active vs. passive voice are still eluding you, check out [livejournal.com profile] supercheesegirl's FG post on Passive Voice.

With apologies for the lateness!

 

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[identity profile] thistle-chaser.livejournal.com 2013-09-29 04:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Wait, I protest. "Dumbledore died.", an example from the linked post, is active. "Dumbledore died by zombies" works though (and would be one heck of a story).

Still a fun tip though! :)
chomiji: Tenpou from Saiyuki Gaiden. with the caption Not necessarily by the book (Tenpou - Not by the book)

[personal profile] chomiji 2013-09-30 01:16 am (UTC)(link)
Well, in [livejournal.com profile] supercheesegirl's post, the brief sentence "Dumbledore died" is actually given as an example of an intransitive sentence: that is, a sentence that can't be put into the passive voice. The author notes that "You can’t make an intransitive sentence passive because there’s no object to flip."

"Dumbledore died by zombies" is not really a valid English sentence because die is an intransitive verb. The usual way to express that idea would be to use a transitive verb such as kill, which can take an object. Therefore you would either have "Dumbledore was killed by zombies" or (to turn it around and make it active) "Zombies killed Dumbledore."
Edited 2013-09-30 01:16 (UTC)

[identity profile] thistle-chaser.livejournal.com 2013-09-30 01:20 am (UTC)(link)
Ah! Good point, thanks. I think I read the other post too quickly.

chomiji: Tenpou from Saiyuki Gaiden. with the caption Not necessarily by the book (Tenpou - Not by the book)

[personal profile] chomiji 2013-09-30 02:09 am (UTC)(link)
No worries! It was a big, meaty article that covered a lot of ground, with many examples.

[identity profile] dark-weezing.livejournal.com 2013-10-01 06:35 pm (UTC)(link)
This was most helpful, as passive voice occasionally trips me up. Thank you.

And zombies make everything better..., or worse. Heh.
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